High Noon: After Breaking Dawn A Twilight Fanfic
by Emerald Star73
Summary: 10 years post-Breaking Dawn. Edward & Bella are living happily ever after, finally attend Dartmouth. New details of Alice's past are discovered; several seemingly unrelated events from the past are intertwined. Will the Volturi threat ever be eliminated?
1. Flight

**Author's Note: **

**I loved Breaking Dawn (and the entire series, of course), but at the end I was left still wanting more. I found myself imagining what Edward and Bella would be doing in another ten years, and it bothered me that the Volturi threat was still "out there." This story is my attempt at a sequel for Breaking Dawn. **

**When I began this story back in 2009, I intended to keep everything in line with canon. However, the Illustrated Guide has become available since then, and some of the things I had already written and some of the things that part of the plot hinged on are not in line with what has been published in the Illustrated Guide. Alice's past is completely different in my story, and I had made up names for Nahuel's sisters which I have not bothered to go back and change. But aside from that, everything should be in line with the four books from Twilight Saga, Midnight Sun, and the information that was available on the twilightlexicon site at the time I started writing the story.  
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**The story is now complete and all chapters of the main story have been posted (36 chapters). The reason I am not yet marking it officially "complete" on the site is because I still have an epilogue planned as well as an outtake.  
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**Rating: Rated T because the Twilight series is rated T. There is no foul language in this story, and sexual references/violence are be handled in a similar manner as in SM's Twilight books.  
**

**Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of Stephenie Meyer.**

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Chapter 1: Flight

"Go to sleep," Edward murmured as he closed his eyes. I leaned over on his shoulder and pretended to sleep as the flight attendant stepped out of the cabin and came down the aisle for another routine check. The other first-class passengers were all asleep, or nearly so, and we might as well blend in.

I could hear the familiar sound of Jacob's snore just behind me. Renesmee was leaning against his shoulder as I was against Edward's - only she didn't have to pretend; she really was asleep. I had envied her that ability, on a few occasions, but not often. I truly enjoyed the extra time afforded to me by my inability to sleep. Even though we had eternity to spend together, I didn't want to waste one minute sleeping, not when I could spend it with Edward, fully conscious.

Edward and I had been married for ten years now. Our love had only deepened with time, and our desires for one another physically had not lessened. Emmett and Rosalie had nothing on us. However, as a more mature vampire, I was better able to balance my daily activities and had learned how to focus on whatever task was at hand. My current task was to sit next to Edward on this plane, for a few hours, with no inappropriate public displays of affection. Not an easy task, but I would manage.

I let my thoughts roam through the events of the last decade.

Ten years ago, I was still human, on a similar flight, headed to the same island off the coast of Brazil. Esme's island. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that I would conceive Renesmee on my honeymoon. Carlisle hadn't even known to warn us. As it turned out, Renesmee was not the first of her kind - half vampire and half human - but her kind was very rare. We had learned of only four others, half-siblings to one another, who lived in the Amazon. None of their mothers had survived. And their father had been hunted down and destroyed by the Volturi shortly after our confrontation with them nearly 10 years ago. Nahuel hadn't minded; his half-sisters were another story.

The pregnancy took its toll on my human body, but I kept my promise - I kept my heart beating, with some help from Jacob and Edward. Edward changed me right after she was born. I will never forget the endless pain of the fire that burned through my veins. My transformation took less time than most, but those two days felt like an eternity. It was worth it, though; I've had no regrets. The last ten years have been the best of my life.

The public story at first was that Edward and I had moved to Alaska to attend college, when in reality we had continued to live in Forks with the Cullens for the first three years of our marriage. Only Charlie, Renée, and our Quileute friends knew the truth - or at least some version of it. It was the longest Edward's family had ever stayed in any one place, and we had been seriously pushing the limits of believability for Carlisle's age. His body was frozen at twenty-three, and he was claiming thirty-seven. He was well-known in the area, being one of the few doctors in town, and he had begun getting comments from random people at the hospital about how he never looked any older. We hated moving away from Charlie, and Jacob's pack brothers, but the time had come; we no longer had a choice.

I smiled to myself as I thought of Charlie. One thing I had expected to lose when I became a vampire was contact with my human family. We were furious with Jacob when we first found out he had invited Charlie over to the Cullens' shortly after my transformation. I was a days-old newborn vampire, and the results could have been disastrous, but it had worked out really well. Even ten years later, Charlie still insisted on being on a "need to know" basis and had come nowhere close to guessing the Cullens' secret. He had taken my altered appearance - as well as Renesmee's presence - in stride. Of course, the changes to my body probably didn't seem quite so shocking when compared to seeing Jake phase into a wolf. He knew there was something "magical" going on, but he honestly did not want to know any details. I couldn't have planned it more perfectly myself.

And then there was Renée. In the beginning, I thought I might have to let her think I died. It had taken me 6 months to come up with a story that I knew would satisfy her. Emmett hadn't thought my mom could possibly be that gullible, but he should have known better than to bet against Alice. We hadn't introduced Renesmee to Renée until she was seven years old, when we were able to pass her off as Edward's long-lost biological sister. Before that, we would have Jacob "babysit" at Billy's whenever she was visiting. Renée still didn't know Nessie was her granddaughter, but she loved her nonetheless.

Jacob let out a particularly loud snore, jolting me from my trip down memory lane. I checked my watch, noting that we still had about thirty minutes of flight time remaining. Everyone was still sleeping - or pretending to. I resumed entertaining myself with memories of the past few years.

When it had become a necessity to leave Forks, we moved to Wisconsin and remained there for five years. Our new house was quite similar to the one in Forks. Edward, Emmett, Jasper, Alice, and Rosalie had enrolled in high school once again. Jacob had looked twenty-five for some time and could not pass for a high school student, so he posed as the Cullens' groundskeeper. At first, he had objected (to put it mildly) to the idea of playing what he saw as the role of a servant, but he eventually agreed it was the most believable explanation for any humans who might ask. After all, he looked as old as Carlisle; he couldn't be another adopted child.

I stayed home, where Esme and I homeschooled Renesmee; Nessie and I stayed out of the public eye so that the locals didn't know we existed. Our story if anyone happened by the house and saw us was that I was Edward's sister-in-law and Renesmee was his niece. But our house was quite secluded, and none of the locals ever happened by. We did get out of the house during this time of course; in fact, we had traveled extensively, enjoying a number of vacations, as well as several field trips to supplement Renesmee's education. We just avoided the local town and its surrounding communities.

We sent Charlie plane tickets, and he visited about once a month. He just couldn't stay away from his granddaughter. We also sent tickets to Renée, but she visited less frequently, as she had a busy life with Phil and was completely unaware that she had a grandchild.

When it was time to leave Wisconsin, Alice and Jasper, and Emmett and Rosalie, took an extended vacation - traveling the world and enjoying some time alone with their mates. Carlisle and Esme moved to Massachusetts, where Carlisle had accepted a position with Harvard, teaching and conducting research.

Edward and I, along with Renesmee and Jacob, moved - of all places - to La Push. Charlie had been delighted. The wolves and the tribal council had come to accept us because of Jacob's imprinting, and with time, they grew to trust us enough that the treaty was amended to permit our family on Quileute land. The wolves had given up trying to keep their existence a secret from their own tribe a year earlier; too many of their people had noticed that the pack members weren't aging. Jake had never given his pack the same orders of secrecy that Sam had, so the knowledge had traveled to the extended families and close friends of his pack members even before that. So there was no need for Edward or me to conceal our lack of aging, since the Quileute people already knew our secret, and the Volturi already knew they knew. It was also unlikely that anyone we knew from Forks would see us there. Many of the people who had attended high school with us had moved away to larger cities to attend college and had not returned to Forks. We just avoided touristy areas like First Beach, and Edward was able to give us sufficient warning if any familiar minds from Forks wandered into our vicinity.

For a long time, Renesmee had been begging for us to let her attend a "real" school, like her dad and her aunts and uncles did throughout much of her life, but we hadn't been able to allow it when she was growing at such an accelerated rate. The risk of exposure would have been too great - we couldn't have her in the public eye long enough for anyone to notice her unusual growth. So she was thrilled when we moved to La Push because she was able to attend the Quileute high school.

Renesmee's childhood had passed so quickly. She had physically matured to adulthood in less than eight years, and her rate of mental maturity had been even more astounding.

My thoughts were interrupted as I heard the flight attendant make her way down the aisle to once again check if anyone needed anything. Once she had returned to the cabin, I looked up at Edward's face - the very definition of perfection - and saw that he was looking at me as well. He kissed me gently on the forehead - he knew not to distract me _too_ much - and then gazed into my eyes. I recognized the curious look on his face and felt the familiar pressure against my mental shield. Over the years, I had become much more sensitive to my shield and could detect whenever anyone was trying to get through it. Not that Edward was actually _trying_, but whenever he focused on me and wondered what I was thinking, I could feel it nonetheless. I had learned how to move my shield off of myself temporarily but it still required some effort and concentration, and to be honest, I rather liked the ability to keep my thoughts private.

"What are you thinking right now?"

I answered verbally, as was my habit. "I was just thinking about how much things have changed in the last ten years. And how they have only gotten better."

"Yes...I was thinking the same thing." He smiled.

Then a look of distaste and irritation crossed his face.

"Would you mind?" He whispered to me, as he glanced back toward Jacob, who was still sleeping soundly. Jacob must be dreaming of Renesmee again. Jacob's vivid mental pictures had been a source of irritation to Edward before we were married, back when Jacob thought he was in love with me. But Jacob had become our son-in-law; he and Renesmee had gotten married about a year ago. So now Edward found himself subjected to Jacob's vivid mental images and thoughts about our daughter. Of course Edward recognized that these thoughts were not inappropriate for Jacob to have about his wife, but no father wants to see such visuals of his daughter.

I threw my shield around Jacob and Renesmee, and the relief in Edward's eyes was instant.

"Thank you." He sighed, and then shuddered as if trying to shake off the images that had just intruded into his mind.

I was in the habit of shielding them whenever we were all awake and together, so that Edward would not have to listen to their passionate thoughts about one another. With practice, I had developed better control of my shield and it had become much easier to expand it to encompass more people than just myself; I no longer needed to be angry or threatened to manipulate it. However, it still took a portion of my concentration to maintain it, so I had dropped it about an hour ago when Jacob had started to snore.

Jacob had imprinted with Renesmee the first time he saw her face - when she was just a few minutes old. Edward and I had both reacted with shock and anger when we first found out, but we knew he truly had no choice in the matter. So we accepted - reluctantly, at first - that he would always be an integral part of her life, and thus ours as well.

When she was little, he was her best playmate. As she grew, he was her trusted friend. When she hit puberty, she began to develop romantic feelings for him. Edward had been quite impressed by Jacob's self-control when our five-and-a-half-year-old teenager began hitting on him. It reminded me a bit of Edward's self-control with me when I was still human, except Edward said that Jacob's thoughts and desires were actually much more pure than his own had been. Jacob always did what was best for Renesmee.

Renesmee had reached physical maturity a few months before her 8th birthday. She had the appearance of a seventeen or eighteen year old when she finally stopped growing and changing. Only then did Jacob begin to return her romantic interest. That was around the time we moved from Wisconsin to La Push.

They both enrolled as seniors at the Quileute high school and "dated" that year. Jacob had completed his junior year 8 years earlier, but had not returned for his senior year because he had imprinted with Renesmee that summer and refused to be away from her to attend school. Renesmee's homeschooling, along with her natural abilities for learning, put her way ahead of the other seniors, and ahead of many college graduates, for that matter. She had no problem keeping up with the course work. Renesmee tutored Jacob in the evenings, though Edward said it was just an excuse for him to spend more time with her, and I suspected they mostly concentrated on each other during the school day as well.

That had been an interesting year. Renesmee thoroughly enjoyed high school, and Jacob was the perfect boyfriend. It had been a difficult time for Edward, hearing their thoughts about one another. Though he knew she was nearly grown and recognized that this romantic relationship was not only inevitable but actually desirable, he wasn't quite ready for his little girl to be an adult, and his ability to hear their thoughts was awkward, to put it mildly. I often shielded Renesmee to give her some mental privacy, but Edward persuaded me not to block Jacob, as he determined to keep an eye on "the dog" and make sure his daughter's virtue was protected.

Jacob had made a great effort to be careful with his thoughts and went out of his way to be considerate and respectful of Edward during that time. He was as protective of his "Nessie" as Edward was, and would do nothing to jeopardize his relationship with her. In addition, he knew he had gained Edward's respect as a future son-in-law, and he was not going to risk losing it.

They were married a few months after graduation, in a traditional ceremony on the reservation. They had gone to Hawaii on their honeymoon - I did envy their ability to publicly bask in the sun. I had been shielding their thoughts, as much as possible, since their return.

My thoughts then turned to the immediate future. This was our first trip back to Isle Esme since our honeymoon. It seemed a fitting place to celebrate our tenth anniversary. Jacob and Renesmee were traveling with us as far as Rio, where they would be staying in a beach house to celebrate their one year anniversary, which happened to be a few days after ours. They also hoped to make a side trip to the Amazon jungle to visit Nahuel and his three half-sisters, Launhe, Shua, and Mishna.

I thought of Kaure, the part Ticuna Indian who was a member of the cleaning crew for Esme's island home the last time we were there. Her tribe was more superstitious - or more aware - than the general population, and she had recognized Edward for what he was, or close enough. And she had dared anger him - had risked her life - just to check on me. She had been worried about why he had me, a human, alone with him on the island.

And when she noticed my pregnancy, Edward was able to persuade her to share some tidbits from her tribe's legends about half-vampires with him. She did not have a lot of information, but simply learning that there _were_ legends was immensely helpful, and gave Edward and Carlisle a starting point in their research on how the pregnancy might progress and how they might be able to keep me alive at least long enough to be changed. And if I had not heard her tell Edward "morte" I might not have suspected how he was initially planning to kill our "monster" to save me; I would not have had time to get Rosalie to protect us until Renesmee herself could convince Edward that she wasn't a monster.

Also, knowledge of Kaure's legends helped Alice and Jasper track down the Amazon half-vampires, and Nahuel had accompanied her back home to prove to the Volturi that the existence of mature half-vampires posed no threat of exposure.

I admired Kaure's courage, and I felt somehow indebted to her. Had Kaure not been there, or had she ignored what she had seen in the interest of her own safety, I felt quite certain my life would not be so perfect. I might not have survived the pregnancy. Or Edward might have been successful in terminating my pregnancy, in which case we would not have Renesmee. If Alice had not found the Amazons, we would have fought the Volturi, and even if we had won that battle, it was unlikely that all of our family would have survived. Yes, I owed Kaure my life. I wondered if there was something we could do for her to show our appreciation.

"Edward, do you think Kaure will still be part of the cleaning crew? Or do you think we could find her? When we were here before, she risked angering a vampire to check on me, and if she hadn't shared her tribe's legends with you, I'm not sure how things would have turned out. I would like to thank her, maybe do something for her to show my appreciation." I spoke in a voice too quiet for humans to hear.

"I don't know. But we can certainly try to track her down." I could tell from the tone of his voice that he liked the idea and was starting to make his own plans. "Hmmm. We will need to go without Renesmee. Kaure would undoubtedly recognize her resemblance to both of us, and she does not need to know about the accelerated aging - that was not part of her tribe's legends."

"I have some old pictures we could show her. Kaure would expect her to look about nine years old now, so we could show her pictures from the first 3 or so years." I thought some more, trying to think of what we could do to show our appreciation. I had no idea what she might want or need. "I'm not sure what we could do for her. We'll have to just ask her, and even if she won't tell us maybe you will hear something in her thoughts, and we can return with a gift for her."

"Yes, my little talent does prove to be useful from time to time," he agreed, with my favorite crooked smile. "But she's not aware of my mind-reading, so we'll need to be careful about that." He paused, then continued his thoughts about our plan. "If we go together, she will see that I have changed you. She should not be too surprised, since their legends of the Libishomen do include the ability to change humans, but she will probably be frightened. But I think we can convince her that we mean no harm."

"My thoughts exactly," I said, feeling and relieved that he had objected to the idea of us visiting Kaure. I had been concerned he might not think it was safe for her to see I had been transformed. But Edward had already confirmed to her that he was what she had suspected. Would it really matter if she knew of two vampires instead of just one?

"We're almost there," Edward whispered. A few seconds later plane began to descend.

Jacob and Renesmee both woke up as we landed.

We once again took a taxi through the streets of Rio, headed toward the ocean. But this time Jake and Renesmee were with us. We would be dropping them off at their beach house on our way to the dock.

The beach was far enough from Esme's island to allow each couple privacy - it was well out of Edward's "hearing" range when we were on the island, but it was close enough that we could meet up and do some activities together as well. Mostly we would want to spend this vacation time alone with our mates, as it was an anniversary trip after all, but we also made plans to meet a couple times during our two-week trip for a bit of family time.

We arrived at the beach house, and Jake and Nessie got out of the car. I kept my shield around them until they went inside the house, and then we were speeding away to the dock. We got in Carlisle's boat and headed to "our" island. On my first trip in this boat, all I could see around me was darkness, but with my vampire vision the short trip was more scenic. I could even see the fish down in the water, darting away from the boat as we approached. I thought about how I would be able to "snorkel" with Edward without any gear this time.

"What are you thinking?"

"I was just watching the fish. I couldn't see them last time." I smiled as another thought came to me. "Have you ever hunted underwater? Sharks are predators - I wonder how their blood would taste."

"They're quite good, actually. Almost as good as mountain lion."

"Seriously?" I asked. I wondered when he had been shark hunting - hadn't he told me he went to the mainland to hunt the last time we were here?

"They're more difficult to hunt, since we can't use our sense of smell underwater, but we can keep an eye out for one when we go snorkeling. One would be enough - they're big enough that we could share."

I suppressed a smile as an image of Lady and the Tramp sharing their meal of spaghetti sprang to my mind. Two vampires sharing a shark would not have quite the same sweet, romantic quality as the image from the movie.

I could see the island up ahead, in clear detail even in the faint light of the moon. It was even more beautiful than I remembered. We arrived at the island, and once again he swept me into his arms and carried me into the house. We flipped on the lights and Edward went back for the luggage. Everything looked the same as before. I peeked in the bedroom and noted the headboard had been replaced with what appeared to be an exact replica. I went into the room with the big white bed and sniffed the pillows. They were new, and these were not filled with feathers. I smiled at his preparedness. It was unlikely he would bite a pillow again, but who knew what other damage we might do. Best to avoid the possibility of another feather mess.

He returned and set the luggage down. No need for a human moment this time, I thought to myself.

"How does a midnight swim sound?" I asked suggestively.


	2. Anniversary

Chapter 2: Anniversary

"I'll race you," he said.

We took off at vampire speed and were in the water in less than three seconds.

He had given me a head start but still beat me into the water, his clothes hanging neatly in a nearby tree and swaying gently in the breeze. I quickly realized why he was trying to stifle a chuckle. I had forgotten all about my clothing in my focus on our race. I promptly tore away the unnecessary fabric and tossed it into the same tree. The warm tropical water was amazingly pleasant against my skin. Human memories of our first midnight swim were surfacing in my mind, sharpened somehow by the familiarity of the place. I moved my shield aside for a moment, letting him hear my wonderful memories of our first swim together ten years ago, and my thoughts on how it was even better now. His eyes lit up; he loved it when I shared my mind with him that way.

Then his expression became thoughtful. "I was so scared when we arrived here the last time," he confessed. "You knew I was terrified that I would hurt you. But there was also the fear of the unknown. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't realize until just now that you felt the exact same sort of anxiety that I did. You seemed so confident."

"I was confident in you. I knew that we were meant to be together. And I knew that you wouldn't hurt me."

"Your confidence in me was not deserved. I'm still not sure how I maintained as much control as I did. It's a wonder I didn't kill you."

"Well, you didn't. And you don't have to worry about that any more." I knew he was thinking of the bruises, which were so inconsequential that I hadn't even noticed until he pointed them out. But I didn't want to think about that right now; I certainly didn't want _him_ thinking about that now. I rubbed my hands across his bare shoulders and began kissing his neck, as I had decided it was time to distract him from this conversation. His mouth found mine, but he was kissing me with restraint, his mouth closed...like when I was human.

I felt confused for a moment, but then I smiled as I realized what he wanted. We reenacted our first night on the island, pretending I was still human and that it was our first time together.

My human honeymoon was still one of my best memories ever. Edward had planned everything to the most minute detail and our first time together could not have been more perfect or more romantic. But this time, when it came time for the part where I fell asleep on his chest, we dropped the "human" charade and continued expressing our love throughout the night. I was very glad that this time I didn't have to waste any time sleeping, and that Edward could enjoy himself fully without worrying about accidentally crushing me or losing control and draining my blood.

I couldn't think of a more perfect way to celebrate our ten year anniversary.

All too soon, the sun began to filter in through the windows - the beginning of a new day. It was our habit to get up with the sunrise; it normally divided our private time from our family time. I considered whether we should go ahead and get up or just remain in the bed; our family wasn't there, and no one would know.

I turned onto my side, snuggled close to Edward, with my head propped up by my hand. Edward lay on his back, his face turned toward me. I knew he had noticed the sun too, but he had made no move to get out of bed. I looked into his eyes and ran my free hand slowly over his shoulders and chest. What had I done to deserve someone so amazing?

"Thank you," I told him, my heart full of gratitude that I was with him and he was mine.

"For what?" There was that crooked smile I loved so much. I gave him several gentle kisses, circling around the edge of his mouth, before touching my lips to his for a more lingering kiss. There were so many things I was thankful for. Could I even name them all?

"Thank you for loving me," I began, trailing my fingers along his arm.

"Truly, I do," he whispered into my ear. I shivered with pleasure as his breath tickled my earlobe.

"For convincing me to marry you," I continued. I looked at my ring sparkling in the sunlight.

He kissed my ring, followed by each of my fingers on that hand. "I had hoped you would appreciate that someday."

"For convincing me to wait until our honeymoon."

He raised his eyebrows. "You made that shockingly difficult," he murmured. "You have no idea how badly I wanted you or how close I came to giving in that time you tried to seduce me."

"For making our first time so perfect." I ran my fingers slowly through his hair as I kissed him again.

"I'm glad I could please you. You deserve no less than perfection," he purred as his gentle hands rubbed my back lovingly.

"For changing me yourself."

"I couldn't stand the thought of anyone else's venom inside of you," he confessed softly. "You know I would have done it whether you met my 'condition' or not."

I leaned back so I could look him in the eye again. "For being such a great father to our daughter."

He smiled at the thought of Renesmee. "She has a pretty amazing mother, too." He stroked my face gently with the back of his hand.

"For saving my life so many times." The van. James. The Volturi. Victoria. Renesmee's birth. Not to mention that he had saved me from himself, that first day in Biology, and the afternoon in the meadow, and when I "attacked" him during our first kiss, and so many other times when I took it for granted. He had continually resisted the blood of his "singer" in order for us to be together.

"I couldn't live without you," he breathed. "I'll never let anything happen to you."

"Thank you for being mine." I still marveled that he was truly mine, that he loved me, that he wanted me, and that we would always be together.

"I am yours. Forever."

I rested my head contentedly against his chest and he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me closer, and kissed the top of my head. We remained in that embrace for several minutes as I reveled in my happiness. Surely there was no one happier than I was, here in the arms of my Edward.

"Is it my turn now?" His sexy velvety voice interrupted my reverie.

"Your turn for what?"

"To be thankful."

"No, I'm the only one who gets to be thankful today," I teased.

"Is that so?" He flipped me onto my back and suddenly I was staring up at my husband's gorgeous face as he leaned over me with that wonderfully crooked smile, his piercing golden eyes proclaiming their love for me, his skillful lips inches from mine. "Silly Bella. I have so many things for which I need to thank you." His breath was intoxicating and I inhaled deeply.

"Yes?" It was all I could manage to say in my state of dazzlement.

"Thank you." He gently caressed my face, and I thrilled to the sensation of his smooth touch.

"For what?" I murmured, closing my eyes as his fingertips glanced over my eyelids.

"For teaching me how to love. Before you, I was empty and incomplete, and I was arrogant enough that I didn't even know it. I never really understood love until I experienced it with you."

I was still a bit too dazzled to make a coherent reply.

"For forgiving me all of the times I inexcusably placed you in danger," he continued. He ran his fingers along my shoulder and down my arm and then took my hand in his.

"You know none of those times were your fault; there was nothing to forgive," I insisted softly.

"For saving my life when I so foolishly tried to end it."

"I'm thankful for that one too." I smiled without humor and squeezed his hand. "I refuse to even imagine if I had failed."

"For taking me back after I left you." There was such regret in his eyes. We both normally avoided speaking of the time he was gone - the memories of our time apart were so painful for both of us.

"That was a no-brainer." I pulled back my shield briefly and let him hear the emotions I remembered from that day, when I had first truly comprehended that he loved me as much as I loved him, when I had realized the truth of why he had left and accepted that he had really come back and that it wasn't just a dream. He kissed me, his lips crashing against mine with an intensity that would have been fatal when I was human. My shield slipped back into place as I lost focus, and the kiss ended as he pulled back so that he could gaze into my eyes again.

"For choosing me..."

As if there had ever been any other choice. I knew he was thinking of Jacob, but I had always known who I couldn't live without - and Jacob had always known it too. Surely Edward had as well? "No one else ever had a chance," I assured him.

"For marrying me despite your qualms about the institution of marriage." He held up my left hand so that it caught the sunlight which was now flooding our room. The ring sparkled again in the sunlight, but now my hand did as well, and rainbows danced around us.

"The fear I had of marriage seems so irrational now." I fingered the wedding band on his hand, the simple gold band that meant he was _mine_. "You know, when you first proposed to me, I never fully comprehended all the benefits I would enjoy as Mrs. Cullen." I reached up to wrap my hands around his neck and pulled his face closer to mine. "I never imagined my life could be this perfect." I kissed him along his jaw and down his neck. He groaned with pleasure. It still thrilled me that I could do that to him.

Unexpectedly, he pulled away, though there was still hunger in his eyes. The corners of his mouth turned up in a slight smile. "I wasn't finished thanking you yet. It's not fair for you to keep distracting me like that."

I smiled smugly and waited for the next item from his mental list.

His eyes grew serious and he finally spoke after a long pause. "For protecting Renesmee when I would have destroyed her."

That seemed so long ago, a brief nightmare with an amazingly happy ending. He had believed he had impregnated me with a monster that was killing me, until her development reached the point where he could hear her thoughts. I recalled how the tortured look on his face had shifted to joy as he realized what I had somehow known all along - that our child loved both of us and was not a monster. "You loved her from the moment you knew her," I assured him. I reached for his hand and rubbed circles with my thumb. I wish there was some way I could take away the guilt he must feel.

"For protecting our entire family from the Volturi," he continued, pulling his hand from mine so that he could play with a strand of my hair. He tucked it carefully behind my ear and traced the features of my face with his fingertips. "I don't think you can even imagine the pride I felt when I realized you were shielding _all_ of us, when I heard Aro's thoughts reflect his fear as he realized how strong you were, and I realized we had hope. You amazed us all."

"It felt so good to finally be able to help," I breathed. "To finally be protecting you for once, instead of the other way around." It was hard to concentrate on his words with him still touching my face so delicately, tracing under my eyes, over my nose, around my mouth, across my cheekbones. I could feel so much love in these simple touches.

"For always seeing the best in me. Sometimes... I almost feel worthy of your love." Of course I always saw the best in him. What else was there to see?

"You _are_ the best, in every possible way. When will you ever see yourself clearly? You are more than worthy of anything I can give you." It was my turn to trace the features of his face. I felt so lucky to be married to him, to be alone with him here on this wonderfully romantic tropical island. I hoped he could feel the love in my touch - I wondered for the millionth time if my touch could possibly feel as good to him as his did to me. He closed his eyes and sighed contentedly. I traced over his eyelids and then dropped my hand down to his chest, as he lay back on the bed beside me, keeping his face toward me.

"For making me the happiest man in the world." His lips brushed against mine as we wrapped our arms around each other.

"Well, I'm the happiest woman. We make a good pair, don't we?" I felt his lips turn up in a smile.

"That we do." He kissed me passionately, and I was thankful that neither of us needed to breathe. Maybe we should just stay in bed all day. Who cared about the tropical paradise right outside our door?

We were suddenly interrupted by the sound of Edward's mobile phone. It took me a second to realize that it was not in our room, but in the pocket of his jeans which were still swaying from the tree down by the water. "You should get that," I told him. "It could be important."

I admired his perfect form as he leaped from the bed and dashed down to the tree at vampire speed. The phone had been ringing for less than 5 seconds when he answered it. I sat up and listened - not that I was trying to eavesdrop, of course, but I couldn't help but overhear, and I'll admit I was a bit curious as to who would be calling us on the first morning of our anniversary vacation.


	3. Thiago

_I admired his perfect form as he leaped from the bed and dashed down to the tree at vampire speed. The phone had been ringing for less than five seconds when he answered it. I sat up and listened -- not that I was trying to eavesdrop, of course, but I couldn't help but overhear with my vampire hearing, and I'll admit I was a bit curious who would be calling us on the first morning of our anniversary vacation._

* * *

Chapter 3: Thiago

"Hello?"

_Hey, Dad. How's the island?_

"It's great. Very peaceful. Is everything okay?"

_Yeah, Dad, I was just checking in like you asked me to. Nine o'clock every morning, right?_

"Oh, right. I hadn't looked at a clock this morning."

_Well, I'm sure I didn't wake you up. (giggling)_

"How is the beach house? Is Jake happy with it? Did they have the refrigerator stocked to his satisfaction?"

_The house is great. Jake and I really appreciate you renting it for us. The refrigerator was very full -- he just finished eating a big breakfast._

"What do you have planned for the day? Have you decided when you're going to visit Nahuel?"

_I think we're going to stay around here today and just relax on the beach. We're planning to go look for Nahuel and his sisters tomorrow. What are you and Mom doing?_

"Well, your mom was wanting to look up an old acquaintance who lives here in Rio, so we may spend the day tracking her down. We haven't really finalized our plans for the day yet."

_Okay, well, Jake's waiting on me to go out to the beach now. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?_

"Okay. Have fun."

_Love you, Dad. Bye._

Edward came back into the house carrying yesterday's clothes. He placed his clothes into an emptied suitcase that had been designated to hold our "used" items, and dropped the remains of my outfit in a nearby trash can. I promptly retrieved it and added it to the suitcase. Yes, my outfit would need to be thrown out, but I didn't want the cleaning crew speculating as to why my clothes were ripped apart like that. He raised an eyebrow and smirked, but said nothing.

As we selected new outfits and dressed for the day, I asked him about the phone call.

"So you asked Nessie to call us every morning?"

"Yes. You distracted me so thoroughly that I forgot I was expecting the call. I asked her to check in daily because I thought it would be a good idea for us to know each other's whereabouts each day, in case anything comes up."

"In case anything comes up? Like the Volturi? Has Alice seen something?" I was starting to panic.

"No, love, Alice hasn't seen anything. It's just me, being my overprotective self. But yes, I was thinking of the Volturi. They may never bother us again, but I want to be prepared for any eventuality. If Alice does see something, I want to be able to gather our family as quickly as possible. Right now, Nessie and Jake are out of my "hearing" range, and they're out of your shielding range as well. I'll feel much better if I can at least hear her voice once a day."

I finished buttoning Edward's shirt and gave him a quick "good morning" kiss. "I'm sure you're expecting me to tell you you're overreacting, but I have to admit a phone call once a day doesn't sound like such a bad idea." Now I knew the real reason he had insisted on giving Nessie and Jake a vacation in Rio as our anniversary gift to them, with the timing of their trip coinciding exactly with our own.

"So what do you want to do today? I don't have all our days planned out like when we were here before. I want everything to be your choice this time."

"We could try to track down Kaure. That's what you told Nessie we were doing, and I'm not sure how long it might take us to find her so we should probably get started. I don't want to leave it until the end of the trip when we might run out of time.

Edward made a phone call to the cleaning service, but the lady who answered the phone said she was new and did not recognize Kaure's name. She said she would ask the other workers, who were all currently out on cleaning assignments, and would let us know if any of them knew how we could contact her.

We sat at the kitchen table and began to plan out what we would like to do during our stay on the island. There were many things to explore on the island, and I wouldn't be exhausted at the end of the day like I had been the last time around. We decided to use this first day to just relax. We also looked through some brochures about attractions on the mainland. Several of them looked interesting, but with this sunny weather we could only go out in public at night. Our options were somewhat limited, but we mainly came here for some "alone time" anyway. Alice had said it would rain on Thursday, which was why we had planned to meet Jake and Nessie that day. We could all do something together on the mainland then.

"Do you have any more ideas if no one at the cleaning agency can help us?" I asked.

"We could try other cleaning agencies in the area. She could have switched companies. I can try to search for her online too, although without her full name that will be difficult. Our next step would be to look for her scent. We could check public areas such as around the dock, bus stations, and grocery stores, and we could check around the perimeter of the city for a trail -- when we were here before and she first saw me, she was thinking she might never see her home again, and the images in her mind were of a small house in a rural area, so I don't think she lives inside the city."

I was starting to feel discouraged. Those were good ideas but they sounded like they would take a lot of time, and we already had plans for the only cloudy day. I did want to find Kaure, but I didn't want to spend our entire vacation tracking her.

Edward apparently noticed my frustration. "We could always break into the cleaning agency's office after hours and look for records on previous employees. If we can get her full name, I'm sure Jasper could hack into government records and get her current address."

"I'd prefer to go the legal route, but the easy way is starting to sound a bit tempting."

"I'll call some more cleaning agencies." He grinned as he opened his laptop and did a search on cleaning agencies to get a list of phone numbers.

He had made four calls -- with no luck -- when we heard a boat approaching the island.

"That's odd, the cleaning crew wasn't due until Thursday morning." Edward sounded mildly annoyed at the intrusion.

Then he looked over at me, his irritation shifting to surprise. "I can hear two people on the boat. One of them is Kaure's son. He's coming to see who we are, to see who was trying to find his mother. He works for the cleaning service now." He listened some more. "The other man just called him Thiago. I'm seeing thoughts of Kaure at home caring for Thiago's younger brother." He paused for a minute, still listening. "Now he's thinking of the stories his mother told him about the people who own this property. He doesn't entirely believe them but he is curious about what we look like and he is a little worried about why we would be asking for her."

"Do you think he will be willing to take us to see her?"

"Maybe, if we don't scare him too much. We'll have to convince him we're non-threatening."

A few minutes later the doorbell rang. I let Edward answer the door and do all the talking. His Portuguese was much more fluent than mine, and he would know best how to respond based on the man's thoughts. I just stood at his side and tried to smile in a non-threatening way as Edward opened the door and greeted the two men. I had been trying to learn the language, and could understand it spoken, but had not mastered the accent or the sentence structure enough to consider myself fluent.

"Hello there, we weren't really expecting you until Thursday." Edward feigned confusion, pretending not to know why they had come.

"You are correct, your cleaning appointment is not until Thursday." answered Thiago. I could tell which was him because of the resemblance to his mother. "I apologize for the intrusion, but the receptionist at our office said you were looking for my mother, Kaure. I was wondering if I might be able to help you."

"Yes, we did ask for her." Edward smiled. "We remembered she did an excellent job the last time she was here, and were hoping to request her to be assigned to the crew for our home again. She showed great kindness to my wife the last time we were here, and we were hoping to see her again and thank her personally."

"She has mentioned this home before. It is not occupied often. Are you the owner of this home, or one of the family members?"

"I'm the owner's son. My name is Edward Cullen, and this is my wife, Bella. My parents let us borrow the place for our honeymoon, and we've returned for our anniversary."

"It is nice to meet you Mr. Cullen. My name is Thiago, and this is my coworker, Paulo." He gestured to the man next to him, who nodded politely but did not speak. "I wish you a very happy anniversary. How many years has it been?"

"Ten wonderful years." He smiled and reached for my hand. I was a bit surprised at the honesty, but of course Kaure would know it had been 10 years.

Thiago looked a bit startled. "You must have married quite young."

"Yes, we were seventeen the last time we were here. It's hard to believe we are twenty-seven already. Time passes quickly!" Edward lied so confidently I suspected the man might actually believe the inflated age. "How is your mother? Is she well?"

"Yes, her health is fine. I took her place with the company when my brother became ill. She stays with him to care for him."

"I am sorry to hear about your brother. What happened? How long has he been ill?"

"For about six months. It started with simple headaches but they have become debilitating. And he blacks out occasionally. We're not sure what is causing it."

"Doctors have not been able to determine a cause?"

"The general practitioner could not find a cause. We are on a waiting list to see a specialist."

"I have some medical training. Would you consider letting me examine him?"

Thiago hesitated. "What sort of training do you have?"

"I have a degree in Internal Medicine but I am not a practicing physician. My father is, though, and I can consult with him over the phone. He may even know some doctors in Rio -- I can ask if he might know how to get your brother in to see a specialist sooner."

Thiago glanced at his watch. "Would you be able to meet me on the mainland when I get off from work at five this evening?"

Edward looked apologetic. "Actually we have dinner reservations this evening. Could we meet you at the dock at seven? We can get a taxi and follow you from there."

"Certainly. This is so kind of you. I hope both of you have a wonderful stay on the island."

The two men returned to their boat and were soon speeding away back to the mainland.

I arched one eyebrow. "Dinner reservations?"

"Why certainly! I know a great place in Rio with the very finest in local cuisine." We both laughed.

"So the sun will set before seven?"

"Yes, it should be safe for us to be seen outside by six fifteen. We can arrive early and pretend to have come from a restaurant. Also, we don't want Kaure preparing a feast for us, which I'm sure she would do if we were arriving at a typical human mealtime. You remember the food she brought to us last time?"

"How could I ever forget that fish and onion smell?" My empty stomach turned as I recalled the memory of that smell under the influence of morning sickness.

"Hopefully Thiago will tell her we are eating elsewhere. And if not, at least we have an excuse not to be hungry."

"So what was he thinking while you were talking to him? Is he scared of us?"

"Well, he was thinking that we do look the way she had described, and he was a little skeptical about us being twenty-seven years old. He kept reminding himself that the stories were just based on old wives' tales. He was truly grateful for my offer to check on his brother. He has been quite worried about him, but he was still undecided about leading us to his home until I mentioned about Carlisle possibly being able to get his brother in to see a specialist sooner. They've been on the waiting list for nearly four months already. Oh, and he was wondering if you were really the same girl his mother had been so worried about. He was thinking that it might be good for her to see you, to see that you are still alive and well."

I smiled. "I would like that too -- for her to see that I survived the pregnancy _and_ that our baby did as well."

"So, what would you like to do for the next few hours?"

"You know, it's been a while since I relaxed on a warm, sunny beach..."

* * *

We relaxed on our private beach for the remainder of the afternoon. The hot sand felt great against my skin. I could feel each individual grain of sand shifting whenever I moved. I had a great view -- of Edward. His shirt was off and his skin was glistening in the sun. We were both throwing rainbows around on the beach, and on each other. He was completely still, and he looked even more relaxed than he had that first time he took me to his meadow.

I thought back to that day in the meadow, the first time I'd seen him in the sunlight. Human memories had dimmed, but this was one of my clearer ones because I thought of it so often. I could even remember exactly what he was wearing that day. We had removed our matching sweaters before starting our hike and I had been caught off guard when I realized his shirt underneath was sleeveless and unbuttoned. I had been speechless and could only stare in awe at his perfect body. And that was with the limited vision of human eyes. I wondered what he had thought of my reaction. Then it suddenly occurred to me -- I've never seen him dress in a way to flaunt his body any other time; it just seemed out of character for him. Had he been trying to impress me? Or... Alice!

"Edward?"

"Mmmmm... Yes?"

"I was just thinking about that first time you took me to your meadow. Did Alice dress you that day?"

A broad grin crept across his face. "Of course." He chuckled. "She assured me you would like the shirt especially."

"Remind me to thank her for that."

"I felt a bit silly when I was getting dressed that morning, but my mind that day was on other things. You distracted me from any self-consciousness quite effectively." He grinned. "So you really liked it? I'm surprised you even remember."

"You didn't notice my reaction when you took off your sweater?"

He looked puzzled. "I remember when I first turned around after taking it off, you looked sad and maybe a bit scared. I was worried you wanted to go home. You didn't seem to be thinking about my wardrobe selection. Honestly, I didn't think much more about my shirt the rest of the day. I was focused on you."

"I looked sad and scared? I was just stunned by the perfection of your body. I can't believe you didn't notice how I was staring. It was the first time I had seen your perfectly muscular arms..." I ran my hands over them lovingly. "And your flawless chest..." I traced along the marble planes with my fingers, and then rested the side of my face against his heart, as I had that day in the meadow. "And I just felt so inadequate. I had already begun to fall in love with you, and I didn't think there was any way such a perfect creature could ever see me in the same way. I guess I_ was _sad and scared. Sad that I could never measure up, and scared that you would eventually leave me."

"I've told you so many times, you never saw yourself clearly. You have _always_ been beautiful." He kissed the top of my head and wrapped his arms around me. "I am the one who could never deserve you. And I promise you, I will never leave you."

He began humming my lullaby. It could no longer put me to sleep, but I never tired of hearing it. I loved listening to the velvety sound of his voice. He played with my hair as he hummed. When the song came to an end, he relaxed back onto the sand.

I sat up again so that I could enjoy my view. Edward was sprawled out on the sand with his eyes closed. I loved seeing him so relaxed, so peaceful. I knew this was one of the few places where he could completely escape the voices in his head, where he could be truly alone with no one else's thoughts intruding upon his own.

This was also one of the few places where we could relax in the sun with no worries of anyone spotting the effects of the sunlight refracting off our skin. I wasn't sure why we had waited 10 years to come back here. We should make this trip much more often.

The sun sank lower in the sky, and it was soon time to go back into the house and get dressed for our trip to the mainland.


	4. Kaure

Chapter 4: Kaure

I would have preferred to wear a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, several of which I had managed to sneak into my suitcase after Alice had packed for me, but Edward had told Thiago we had dinner plans so we dressed up as if we going to a nice restaurant. Though I wouldn't want her to know it, I was secretly thankful that Alice had insisted on flying into Washington to help me pack for this trip or I might have ended up _shopping_ for an appropriate dress for tonight.

We made our way back to the mainland and then took a cab to a medical supply store. Edward wanted a black bag filled with medical instruments. Most were just props such as the stethoscope and thermometer, while others might be potentially useful. He had called ahead to place his order, and they had it ready to pick up when we walked in. We then went back to the dock, arriving shortly before seven in the evening. We asked our cab driver for recommendations of some nice restaurants, so we would be prepared if asked where we had eaten.

Thiago was already there waiting for us, so Edward got out to speak with him briefly. We then had the cab driver follow his truck to his house. His truck reminded me a bit of the one Charlie bought me when I first moved to Forks, at least in age.

We passed through the edge of the city and were soon headed into a more rural area. We turned down a dirt road and eventually stopped at a very modest but neatly kept home. Edward paid the driver, including a generous tip, and asked him to wait for us, and then we exited the cab. I noticed Edward stifling a grin as Thiago stepped out of his truck and turned to greet us.

"Dr. and Mrs. Cullen..." Thiago began, looking a bit uncomfortable. "My mother is a bit superstitious - she believes the old legends of our ancestors, the Ticuna Indians. If she says or does anything...odd...please overlook her."

"Don't worry," Edward assured him, smiling. "We've met her before. She is a very kind woman. We won't be offended by any superstitions. Have you told her we are coming?"

"Yes, I called her from work earlier today. She said she remembered you from when you were here ten years ago." I wondered what he was thinking. Had that helped convince him of our inflated ages or would he begin wondering if the superstitions were true?

We followed Thiago up to the house, and he opened the door and led us inside. Kaure was standing on the far side of the room, her back to the wall. She looked frightened when she saw Edward walking in behind her son, and she crossed herself. When she saw me, her eyes grew even wider and she crossed herself again. Thiago looked down briefly, embarrassed, then looked up at us apologetically.

"Dr. and Mrs. Cullen, this is my mother, Kaure. Mom, do you remember the Cullens?"

"Yes, I remember you." She summoned the courage to address us directly. "Dr. Cullen, you haven't changed a bit. And Mrs. Cullen, you are even more beautiful than I remembered." She had not missed the physical changes to my face and body.

"You are too kind," I told her with a slight smile.

"It is good to see you again," Edward added. "We were concerned when Thiago told us your other son is ill. I'd like to see what we can do to get him diagnosed and treated sooner - I know waiting lists can be long."

Kaure nodded but still looked frightened.

"Dr. Cullen, my brother Henrique is this way." Thiago led Edward to an adjacent room, where Henrique was resting in bed.

I had hoped to have Edward present when I talked to Kaure, since his Portuguese was much better than mine and his mind-reading could have been useful. But Thiago was not as "aware" as his mother, and we had best keep it that way. I would need to talk to Kaure while Thiago was distracted in the other room.

"Kaure," I began, speaking quietly enough that Thiago would not overhear. "I want to thank you for all you did for us the last time we were here. I know you were worried about me. I noticed how you kept coming up with excuses to check on me to make sure I was okay. You were very brave." I smiled, hoping my broken Portuguese was understandable. I had easily memorized every word in the language along with its meaning, but I wasn't as sure about how to put the words together. "I also appreciated your concern about my pregnancy. I can't tell you how helpful it was that you shared your legends with us - I am forever indebted to you. We have a beautiful little girl now. Would you like to see some pictures of our daughter?"

She looked - stunned and confused. She had not expected that both I _and_ our child could have survived. She also looked rather scared, but her curiosity was winning out. "Your daughter... Yes, I would love to see pictures." She kept staring at me. "Did he - Are you like him now?"

"I would have died otherwise; I wouldn't let him terminate the pregnancy."

"Wouldn't let him?" She stared at me, her eyes wide and full of questions. I didn't need Edward's abilities to know that she would be wondering how I could have stopped him from doing anything he wanted, and why I wouldn't have wanted such a pregnancy terminated.

"He loves me," I explained. "He originally planned to take your advice because he feared for my safety, but he would never do anything against my will." Well, maybe he would have in order to keep me alive, but I'd had Rosalie on my side. "And I knew our child was going to be special. I loved her from the first little nudge inside the womb." I smiled as I pulled the album from my purse. "Here are some pictures from the past few years." The pictures were actually newborn through age three, but appeared to be more like two months through age nine. I had carefully excluded pictures that contained family members Kaure had not met. I approached her slowly so as not to startle her, and handed it to her.

She seemed to relax a little upon realizing the child did not look at all like a monster. "She is just lovely!" she exclaimed. She turned through the album at a leisurely pace, and as she admired the photographs I could hear Edward in the next room consulting with Carlisle on the phone. Renesmee could win over anyone. Just seeing her baby pictures was enough to wrap anyone around her little finger.

Kaure handed the album back to me and smiled hesitantly. "Thank you for stopping by. I had wondered what had become of you." She glanced to the other room, where Edward was still examining Henrique, the cell phone to his ear. "Thiago said your husband will be able to help my son?"

"We will certainly try. We can't promise any miracles. But we will do our best to see that he gets proper medical care."

"Your husband really has medical training? Thiago said he specializes in Internal Medicine." She, understandably, looked rather skeptical.

"Yes." I smiled. "From a rather prestigious school, actually. He is quite knowledgeable, he just lacks experience working with patients. He's not a practicing physician like his father."

Her brow furrowed, probably contemplating the idea that Carlisle, whom she had likely met a number of times since he and Esme vacationed here often, could be a practicing physician. Or possibly she might be wondering how he could be Edward's father, when Carlisle didn't look much older than Edward.

I heard Edward on the phone again, making arrangements with a local specialist Carlisle had recommended. Edward and Thiago would be coming back into this room soon. "I noticed Thiago didn't seem to be afraid of us. Have you told him what we are? Does he know about our earlier encounter?"

"Yes, I have, but he doesn't seem to believe any of it. Kids these days have little respect for our tribal history. He regards our legends as superstitious stories, and he thinks I am a silly old woman with a vivid imagination."

"It is better that way," I told her. "I assure you, you are in no danger from my husband or me. Or from the rest of our family. But there are... others... who do not live as we do - who might harm you if they learned you had too much knowledge. Please trust me when I tell you that Thiago is safer believing the legends are just stories."

She shuddered and then nodded slowly, seeming to grasp what I was telling her - at least to some extent.

Edward and Thiago walked back into the room. Kaure looked up at Edward expectantly.

"I can't make a definitive diagnosis without proper equipment here, but my father and I suspect your son may have a tumor putting pressure on his brain. It may well be operable, but we do need to get him in to see a specialist as soon as possible and have some tests run." He handed Thiago a piece of paper on which he had written down the name, address, and phone number Carlisle had given him over the phone. "I have arranged an appointment for Henrique tomorrow morning at 6am. Dr. Ramos had no openings during normal business hours but he has agreed to come in early to see Henrique, as a favor to my father. Will you able to get him there that early?"

"I can get him there," Thiago stammered, looking at the writing on the paper, "but this is a private hospital." His face fell. "There is no way we could afford it - our government health coverage does not apply there. Private physicians here in Brazil are quite expensive, and I'm sure he would expect cash payment in advance."

"All the necessary arrangements have already been made. It will not cost you anything. And if he needs surgery or other treatments, those have been covered as well."

Kaure and Thiago were both overwhelmed with gratitude, and proceeded to thank us profusely. I felt quite certain they would have been hesitant to accept any other gift, but they would accept our charity to save their beloved Henrique.

"It's the least we could do," I told Kaure. "I sincerely hope Dr. Ramos is able to help him, and that he is better soon."

She then leaned surprisingly close to me and whispered in my ear, "Is Dr. Ramos like you and your husband?"

My throat burned, and I held my breath and stepped back slightly as I looked up at Edward for the answer. I knew he would have heard the question both mentally and audibly. I seriously doubted there were any other vampires on the planet with Carlisle's control, or with his desire to help humans, but what did I know? Edward kept his gaze on Thiago, who was talking to him, but shook his head almost imperceptibly - it would have been imperceptible for the humans in the room, anyway.

"No, he's a regular doctor." I assured her softly, while Thiago continued thanking Edward.

Edward suddenly looked over at Kaure and spoke sharply. "Were you expecting more company?"

Kaure just looked confused.

Edward whispered in my ear at vampire speed. "There are some men on their way here to confront us. They're armed with garlic, aloe vera, holy water, and wooden stakes. Just follow my lead."

I listened and realized I could hear some vehicles approaching. The humans would be able to hear them in about two seconds.

Kaure suddenly seemed to remember something and began to panic as she finally answered Edward's question. "No. I - I didn't mean for them to come. I had no idea they would do this." She ran to open a closet door. "You can hide in the closet."

Thiago was staring at his mother like she had just grown three extra heads. "Mother, you're being ridiculous! Dr. and Mrs. Cullen do not need to hide in a closet!" He glanced out the window and saw the vehicles that had just pulled in to the driveway. "Why are the tribal elders here?"

Kaure spoke softly and apologetically. "I saw Inara today at the market and mentioned the Cullens were coming over. I never expected her to go to the elders."

"I'm terribly sorry about this," Thiago told us. "This is so embarrassing."

"It's okay," Edward assured him. "I don't mind meeting your elders."

"You don't understand," Thiago insisted. "They think you are Libishomen. A vampire." He shook his head at the absurdity. "Our elders still take our people's legends and superstitions very seriously."

"It's really okay," Edward assured him again, smiling. "I'm not offended by your people's legends. Your mother told me what she thought I was when I met her before. Why don't you just introduce us and explain to them why my wife and I are here?"

Thiago went to the door and opened it before the elders had a chance to knock. Six men entered the room. Two of them appeared to be very elderly and frail. The other four ranged in age from about forty to sixty. Each of them carried what appeared to be a ceremonial walking stick, and they wore garlic and aloe vera around their necks. One carried a pitcher of water. Thiago introduced us and explained to them that Edward was a doctor vacationing at one of the properties serviced by his company, who had been so kind as to come to check on Henrique. He started to explain how he had arranged for Henrique to see a specialist the very next day, but he didn't get to finish.

The tallest, strongest-looking one of the group stepped forward and interrupted Thiago by questioning Kaure. "Is this the same one you saw on the island before?" He gestured toward Edward.

"Yes, but - "

"That's all we need to know!" The man thundered. "Come stand behind us. We'll protect you."

Kaure remained frozen in place, backed against the wall a just few feet to Edward's right.

The man with the pitcher of holy water took a step forward and slung the water at Edward. He could easily have sidestepped it but chose not to. Perhaps if they see that holy water does not scare him or harm him or make him go away, they might decide we are human? The water hit its intended target - his face - and also soaked the front of his suit. He managed to maintain a friendly smile. In fact, he looked a bit amused.

Then I saw two of the younger men coming toward me. "They're rescuing you. Libishomen are all male," Edward whispered to me at vampire speed, water still dripping down his face. They thought I was human? I allowed them to pull me toward them, away from Edward, and closer to the front door. They may have intended to take me out to one of their vehicles to complete the rescue, but the men had each grabbed one of my arms to pull me away, and I was wearing a sleeveless dress. The implications of my cold, hard, unnaturally pale arms seemed to register with both of the men simultaneously. They recoiled from touching me. One of them screamed in surprise, while the other announced, "She's one of them!"

I walked back to stand by Edward. I took his hand, and told the men, "I don't know what you're talking about, but Edward is my husband. No one here needs protecting. We only came as a favor to Kaure, to help her son."

Seeing that the holy water was ineffective and realizing that they were dealing with two vampires rather than just one, the men went for their last line of defense. They removed the ornamental handles on their walking sticks to reveal sharp points underneath. They stood in a semicircle in front of us and pointed their wooden stakes in our direction.

Thiago stepped between us and the extended weapons. "This is absurd! How dare you treat guests in our home in this manner! I insist you leave at once!"

Edward told Thiago, "I want you to take your mother to Henrique's room and close the door. I can work this out with these gentlemen. I need you to protect your mother so no one gets hurt."

Thiago didn't appear to be complying, so I leaned over his shoulder from behind in an effort to dazzle him by breathing in his face as I said, "Go. Protect your mother." He grabbed Kaure's hand and towed her off to Henrique's room and closed the door.

Edward began confiscating the stakes, which were still pointed at us. I had been wondering if they were planning to throw them at us or run at us with them. When I saw what Edward was doing, I helped out by grabbing the three closest to me. Together, we had removed the weapons in less than half a second. To the humans, it probably seemed as if they had simply disappeared from their hands and appeared in ours with the handles reattached.

The six men looked at us, stunned and unarmed. They had been defenseless all along, but they now recognized exactly how defenseless they were.

Edward addressed them, speaking low enough that Kaure and her two sons would not hear from the other room. "Your legends of our kind are based in fact. Joham was indeed one to be feared." Their eyes widened at recognition of the name. "However, not all of our kind are like Joham. There are differences among us just as there are differences among you. I do not prey upon women like Joham. The beautiful woman Kaure saw me with before was my wife." He nodded towards me and took my hand in his. "My wife and I pose no threat to your people and we wish you no harm. If we wanted to kill you, you would already be dead. We came here to thank Kaure for some helpful information she provided us the last time we were here, and we plan to see that Henrique receives proper medical attention for his condition. That is our only business here." He held up the three walking sticks in his right hand. "We're going to give these back to you now. We will call Kaure and Thiago back in here so they can see we have worked things out, and you are then going to leave. You will not speak of our conversation to Thiago or Henrique. They do not know what we are, and it is safer for them that way. Do we have an agreement?"

The largest man, who appeared to be the leader, nodded his head in acceptance of these terms. He seemed to be speaking for all of them.

Edward then moved to the smallest, frailest, oldest-looking man at vampire speed, locked eyes with him, and repeated a bit more menacingly, "Do we have an agreement?" Apparently this man's thoughts had been at odds with the leader's.

The man acquiesced, nodding his head silently.

"Good." Edward flashed them a big smile, showing off his razor-sharp teeth.

We handed the walking sticks back to them.

I went to Henrique's door and knocked softly. "You can come back out now. Everything's okay."

Kaure and Thiago stepped back into the room, looking around hesitantly.

"We apologize again for the misunderstanding," the leader told us. "We'll be going now." They turned and left quickly.

Thiago closed the door behind them, then turned to us and began apologizing again. I could tell he was absolutely mortified at what had happened. "I am so sorry! We had no idea they were coming. I am so embarrassed. I can't believe they threatened you with wooden stakes! How did you calm them down? I am so sorry, I should have stayed in here and tried to protect you. I don't know what came over me. I should have left Mother with Henrique and came back out to help you."

I knew exactly what had come over him, but I managed not to smile.

"We just explained why we were here," Edward told him. "We spoke to them calmly and they listened. Thank you for keeping Kaure in the other room. You did exactly what was needed. I was worried they were going to hit one of you by mistake. Those sticks looked rather sharp."

"Yes, they did," answered Thiago. "You were both very brave to stand up to them."

"We've dealt with worse." I muttered, mostly to myself, but they may have heard me.

"They weren't really going to hurt us," Edward told them. "I think they just wanted to scare us. Once they listened to what we had to say, they agreed pretty quickly it was all a misunderstanding."

"I'm still embarrassed." Thiago repeated.

"Don't be. I told you superstitions wouldn't bother us and I meant it. Seriously, don't worry about it. Everything's fine." Edward insisted.

"Edward, I think we'd best be going now if we're going to make it in time for the show." I was glad that little stressful situation was over. We had accomplished our mission, thanking Kaure and arranging medical care for her son, and I was ready to get back to our island.

"Yes, we'd better get moving if we don't want to be late." He played along with my story. He gave Thiago his e-mail address so they could keep us updated on Henrique, then we wished them well and headed back out to our taxi, which was still waiting for us.

We could hear Kaure and Thiago talking inside the house as we walked to the cab, got in, and fastened our seat belts.

_"Mother, I can't believe you had the elders come and harass the doctor and his wife like that!"_

_"I assure you, son, I didn't know they were coming. I had just mentioned to Inara about being nervous that the Cullens were coming here tonight. I never dreamed she would send the elders over here to confront them."_

_"Well, it's fortunate the Cullens were so understanding and forgiving. They were nearly killed right here in our living room, and yet they're still helping us!"_

_"I know. I can't believe we have an appointment for tomorrow morning! Maybe we will finally be able to get some answers."_

_"Yes. If it's a brain tumor that sounds pretty serious, but at least we can start getting him proper treatment. That couple is so generous. I wonder why they seem to feel so indebted to you."_

_"I took her some food when they were here before, when she first learned she was pregnant. I guess she remembered that." She paused. "They must be incredibly wealthy to be able to fund treatment in a private hospital. They acted like it was nothing to them."_

_"Of course they're wealthy. Their family owns an island." He paused. "You surely don't still believe the stories about them that you told me when I was younger? Even the tribal elders who believe all those legends admitted it was a misunderstanding."_

_"No, you are right, I guess I let my imagination run wild sometimes. I shouldn't have even talked to Inara. Mrs. Cullen showed me pictures of their daughter. It is very obviously their child, and she doesn't look like a monster at all."_

Edward and I exchanged smiles.

"I guess my hint got through to her," I told him. "I tried to let her know it would be best to keep Thiago in the dark. I thought he was going to realize the truth when those tribal elders showed up. You handled that situation unbelievably well." I looked at him admiringly.

"Hearing their thoughts definitely helped. They were comparing us to Joham, wondering why our eyes weren't red. I was surprised their legends included his name. I could tell that if I acknowledged the truth of their legends while assuring them we were different, and provided them an easy escape, they would take it. Once they realized they had no effective weapons, they were all really wanting to just leave; well, except for the oldest man. But none of them wanted to appear weak in front of the others."

"What was the old guy thinking?"

"He was thinking of trying again to use the stake if we gave it back to him. He had good intentions - he really wanted to rescue Kaure and her sons - but I didn't want him to cause a scene or damage Kaure's house."

We asked the taxi driver to take us to the address Edward had just given Thiago. We had a stack of cash to drop off at the business office, and needed to make arrangements for any future charges to be billed to one of our non-traceable credit cards.

I thought back to the first part of our visit, and the look on Kaure's face when she saw the first picture of Nessie. "I hope Kaure understood everything I said when I was thanking her - I had hoped you would be around to help with the speaking. My Portuguese is still not the best."

"You did an excellent job on your own, love," he assured me. "I knew you would be fine." He paused. "So Kaure enjoyed the album of Renesmee, did she?" Edward asked with a grin, as our taxi took us back out toward the main road.

"She certainly seemed to. I think Renesmee can win anyone over. I don't think anyone could look at those baby pictures and not love her instantly."

He smiled my favorite crooked smile. "Mind if I take a look? I'm curious which ones you selected."

"Sure." I pulled the album from my purse and watched as he turned through it. My heart swelled with love, with pride, as I remembered our sweet baby and thought about how she has grown into such a lovely young woman. Of course, I had always known there was no way a child of Edward's could ever have been less than perfect. Even though she was not the green-eyed boy I had seen in my dreams when I first conceived her, I had known before she was born that she would be beautiful inside and out, just as her father was. I knew from that first nudge how much I loved her and how happy we would be when she was in our arms.

"This picture always reminded me of you." Edward had stopped on a picture of her at age 2, where she was about the size of an average six-year-old. She was sitting at the dining room table, her feet dangling from a seldom-used chair, as she looked up from a book of poetry she had been reading, her big brown eyes wide at having been interrupted from her book for a picture to be snapped.

"Why is that?" I wondered aloud. "Because we both enjoy reading?"

"Well, that too, but there's a picture of you when you were about the same size, sitting at a table holding a book. It's almost the same pose, and of course you had those same big brown eyes."

I did not recall any such picture of myself. I was not even in possession of any childhood photos of myself - Charlie and Renée still had all of those. I tried to sift through my human memories but I was still coming up blank. Renée had taken so many pictures of me, I don't think I could possibly have remembered all of them even when I was still human. I probably hadn't even looked through those pictures since I was around twelve or thirteen years old. "I don't remember any picture of myself like that. How can you remember - when did you ever see it? I don't remember ever showing you my old pictures."

"Well, love, I had to find something to do to entertain myself during those long days alone in your mom's apartment in sunny Jacksonville. Remember when we went on the weekend trip to visit your mom so we could use the airline tickets Esme gave you for your birthday?"

I did remember that trip. I probably would have been upset and embarrassed if I had known about his snooping at the time, but now I actually felt glad he had looked through them. At least one of us carried the memories. "I'd like to get copies made of all those pictures. I don't remember much about the pictures but I know Renée has albums and albums of them. I'm sure Renesmee would find them interesting, and I'd just like to have them. I don't want to forget my human past."

"That's a great idea. I'm sure she wouldn't mind bringing them on her next visit. We could scan them and make our own albums." He looked over at me cautiously. "So you aren't upset that I snooped while you were out with your mom?" He looked worried and ready to apologize. So adorable. Even if I had been upset I would have forgiven him after one look at that face. I leaned over and gave him a quick kiss.

"No, I'm glad one of us remembers them. My memories of my childhood are pretty sparse. I remember nearly every human day that involved you, because I've repeated those memories in my mind so many times, and I remember some special occasions and events from when I was younger, but I think I've lost most of the details on my day-to-day life as a child. I don't blame you for wanting to look at the pictures - I understand you just wanted to know more about me, just like I want to know everything about you. I really wish I could see pictures of you as a child. I'm sure you were adorable." I looked up at him, smiling as I tried to imagine what he would have looked like as a three or four year old, then looked back down in disappointment as I remembered I had already asked him about such pictures once before. "It's really too bad you don't have any."

He didn't immediately respond, but just sat there looking thoughtful.

"You said you don't have any pictures of yourself as a child. Right?"

"It's true I don't have any. Not with me, not at our house. But... there might be some stored away in my house in Chicago. I've never looked for them, but I remember my mother had a box in her closet where she kept pictures."

"You've never looked for them?" I was incredulous but lowered my voice to make sure the cab driver couldn't hear. "You've been a vampire for nearly a century and it never occurred to you go to get your pictures? Do you think they would still be there? No one ever cleaned out the closets?" I was thrilled at the idea I might get to see pictures of a young Edward after all. "Can we look for them sometime? I'd really enjoy seeing what you looked like as a human."

"I've thought of the pictures from time to time but there would be pictures of my parents in there too. I had considered looking for them and taking them with me when I first moved from Chicago with Carlisle, but the idea of looking at pictures of my parents when they had just died was too painful for me at the time. In fact, I remember there was a large painting of the three of us that used to hang in our living room, and the first time I went back into my house as a vampire, I became irate when I saw it. I think it was a combination of missing my parents and struggling to deal with what I had become. I'm sure you remember the mood swings from your newborn days - they were much worse for me. When Carlisle realized what was triggering my tantrum he took the picture down and hid it so that I would calm down. He was worried I would destroy it in my irrational newborn anger and regret it later. I've only visited the house a few times since then, but I didn't really think of the pictures when I was there. What human memories I have left have dimmed over the years and it's not as painful now to think of my parents - but on some level I think I've avoided ever looking through those pictures because they might stir up the memories again. They might bring the pain back into focus."

I felt guilty; I had been selfish once again. I put my arm around him, as best as I could with both of us restrained by unnecessary seat belts, and stroked the side of his face with my other hand. "I'm so sorry, I should have thought of that. Of course those pictures would be painful for you. I shouldn't have even asked about them. I - " He gently placed one finger over my lips and I stopped speaking, but continued to stare into his eyes.

"I wasn't finished, love. I've only answered the first two of your five questions. Those were the reasons I've never gone back to look for the pictures. I do expect they should still be there. The house has not been occupied in nearly a hundred years, but I don't believe anyone has ever broken in and stolen anything. Everything has been in place any time I've visited, though I've never checked specifically for the pictures, and I now have a rather high tech security system in place. And no, I've never cleaned out my parents' closet."

"But we don't have to - " I interrupted again, only to have his finger reappear over my lips. I kissed his finger and took his hand in mine. "Sorry, I'll let you finish."

"Thank you." He smiled. "I still need to answer your last question. I would like to look at them with you. They will probably stir up some memories, but I can handle anything with you at my side." I managed not to interrupt again, but looked at him questioningly as he continued. "I _want_ to share them with you. I know how much I enjoyed looking at your pictures, learning about what your life was like before I knew you, and I want to give you that same enjoyment learning about my human life."

I waited, making sure he was finished this time. "Are you sure? I don't want to make to do something that causes painful memories to resurface."

"I'm sure," he assured me. "And you're not making me do it. This is something I want. I want to share all of me with you, and this is a part I haven't shared yet." He paused. "Honestly, I do want to see them myself now, too. I wonder how much I've forgotten. I've procrastinated nearly a century, but I think I'm ready now. As long as you're there with me I can handle whatever emotions get triggered."

"If you're sure. I'll admit I'm dying to see them but if it gets too difficult for you we will stop, okay?"

"Really, I'll be okay. I'm thinking we can plan to stop in Chicago on our way to Dartmouth. If we drive it will be on our way anyway, and if we decide to fly we can plan a stopover there. I'd like to spend a full day there, and I can show you some other places in the area too, like the cemetery where my parents are buried, and where I went to school, and where the hospital used to be."

"I would love to spend a day in Chicago. I've always wanted to see your human home. I'm sure Nessie would like to see it too, and Jake. We'll give them a tour of the house, then get them a hotel room so they can have some private time and get some sleep, while we look through the pictures or do whatever else you feel like doing while we're at the house."

"Sounds good." We pulled into a parking lot just then - we had arrived at the hospital. I waited in the cab while Edward went in and finalized the arrangements for Henrique's medical care.

* * *

Back on island, we decided to go for a leisurely walk on the beach before returning to the house. There was a full moon, and the beauty of the island was stunning. We tossed our shoes onto the front steps of the house and walked barefoot in the sand, hand in hand, enjoying the romantic atmosphere of the island.

"Bella?"

"Yes?"

"Have I told you how beautiful you look in that dress?"

"Hmmmm... This particular dress? No, I don't think so."

We stopped walking as he turned to look at me. "Well, that was abominably rude of me. Please allow me to correct the oversight: You look absolutely ravishing." He began gently kissing along the side of my neck, one arm around my waist while his other hand slid slowly up my bare arm before slipping beneath the strap of my dress and onto my upper back.

"Somehow I knew this moonlit walk on the beach wouldn't last very long."

He looked up, puzzled. "Are you disappointed? We can walk as long as you like."

"No, don't be absurd, Edward. I was just thinking this walk isn't going to last much longer because you look quite stunning yourself in that fancy designer suit, and I'm not going to be able to keep my hands off you much longer." I caressed his face gently, tracing over each of his perfect features. Then I ran my fingers through his hair, using both hands, and linked my fingers together behind his neck. "You are one sexy vampire."

A brilliant smile flashed across his face, and he swept me into his arms and resumed kissing my neck as we flew into the house.


	5. Rio

**A/N: I have never been to Rio so my knowledge of the city comes primarily from Wikipedia and some other online sites. If you are familiar with the city and something seems "off" in the story please point it out for me and let me know how to fix it.**

* * *

Chapter 5: Rio

Our stay on the island was passing quickly. Our days soon fell into a pattern, exploring the island or its surrounding waters during the morning and early afternoon, then relaxing on the warm beach until sunset. We saved our more romantic moments for nighttime, for the most part, anyway.

The morning activities were much the same ones Edward had dragged me along on during our first trip to the island when he was trying to distract me and ensure I was exhausted by the end of the day. However, I was able to enjoy them much more this time, now that I was no longer capable of exhaustion, and with the knowledge that I had all night to look forward to with Edward. So much of my time during our last trip had been spent eating and sleeping.

Everything on the island was new again due to experiencing it without my human limitations. I no longer needed snorkeling equipment to explore underwater, and I could see everything in such amazing detail. Of course the fish and other underwater creatures fled from both of us now, but they were still stunningly beautiful as they swam away. The submerged caves were quite fascinating. Last time, I had only been able to peek into the mouths of the caves, but now that I could hold my breath as well as Edward, we were able to actually explore them together, wriggling through small crevices that opened into huge colorful caverns. The small jungle on the island was much more interesting now too - so many new scents and sounds that I had been unable to detect as a human.

On Thursday, Thiago and Paulo arrived early in the morning, as scheduled, to clean the house. Thiago reported that Dr. Ramos had agreed with Edward's diagnosis of a brain tumor. They were not sure yet if it was malignant, but were scheduling surgery to try to remove it regardless due to its size and location. He seemed hopeful that there was a good chance for a positive outcome.

There was not much for them to do in the way of cleaning, other than sweep out the sand that had inevitably been tracked in from the beach that was right outside our door..

I heard Paulo comment to Thiago that the trash cans were all empty and did not appear to have been used. Thiago just shrugged his shoulders. I noticed Edward's mouth twitch and he stifled a smile. I wondered if Thiago was thinking something he thought was funny, or if he was just remembering my torn clothing I had rescued from the trash.

Thiago then peeked inside the refrigerator and was surprised to see that it had not been stocked. He apologized and asked what he could get us. I assured him that I did not wish to cook during my vacation. He laughed, accepting that explanation, and Edward remarked about how much we were enjoying checking out the area restaurants, specifically how much we liked the one the taxi driver had suggested to us.

After they left, we headed to the mainland to meet Jacob and Renesmee. As predicted, it was rainy today. Just a drizzle, really, but enough that the cloud cover would protect us from the sun. We found a cab and I gave the driver the address of the beach house where Renesmee and Jake were staying. Edward pulled out his cell phone and called to let them know we'd be there shortly.

We arrived a few minutes later, and Jacob opened the door. "We're not quite ready," he informed us, inviting us in. I counted five small white feathers floating through the air and then noticed many more stuck onto the shoulders and back of Jacob's shirt. He was trying to dust them off but they kept swirling around him and settling back onto his clothing. I considered asking who bit a pillow but settled for raising an eyebrow.

Edward sat down in the living room to wait, and I wandered into the bedroom to find Renesmee. She was frantically trying to get feathers out of her long, curly, bronze hair. "Sorry we're not ready to go," she apologized. "Jake picked a bad time to start a pillow fight."

I began picking feathers out of her hair. Even with vampire speed, progress was slow. I heard Edward chuckle in the next room. Was he finally - with ten years of hindsight - able to see the humor in the scene I had awoken to on our very first morning on Isle Esme, the night of Renesmee's conception? I knew he would never fully forgive himself for the bruises, but one of the first things I had shown him when I learned how to move my shield was my memory of how absolutely wonderful I'd felt when I woke up that morning, so he did understand now that "Esme's Island and feathers" was purely a happy memory for me. I continued picking feathers out of her hair. "Edward, would you mind helping us with this?"

He walked in and wordlessly began assisting with the feather removal.

"Should we call the cleaning service?" I wondered aloud.

"Jake called them just before we arrived," Edward informed me. "I hear them coming up the walk now. One of them seems familiar..."

Jake opened the door before they had a chance to knock, and I immediately recognized Gustavo, though he was older now. He had gained a few pounds and there were hints of gray throughout his hair. Gustavo introduced himself, and indicated the woman with him was named Bruna.

"What is it with these people and feathers," Gustavo mumbled under his breath. He apparently recognized Edward as he was on his way into the bedroom to clean up the mess. Of course Gustavo had no idea that everyone in the house could hear what he'd said.

"What? Did you two have a pillow fight too?" Jake asked us, grinning. "Who won?"

"Not exactly a fight," Edward replied. "And I'm not sure anyone won."

"Oh, I think Edward won - the pillows never had a chance." I couldn't help laughing.

Jacob and Renesmee looked at us quizzically.

"You don't want to know." Edward assured them. Renesmee blushed, and Jacob changed the subject, ushering us back into the living room to discuss our plans for the day, now that Nessie's hair was finally feather-free.

Jacob spread some brochures out on the table. "I was thinking this might be interesting." He picked up to a brochure on Sugar Loaf. "The view is supposed to be amazing from the top. The sunset won't be as cool as it is in these pictures, with it being cloudy and all, but it would still be fun. We could climb up."

"You two should do that one day when it's sunny," Edward countered. "I'm sure the equatorial sunset would be spectacular - we don't want you to miss out on it by going with us when it's cloudy."

"What about Jardim Botanico?" Renesmee suggested, pulling another brochure from the pile on the table. It boasted photographs of fountains, statues, ponds, trees, and exotic plants.

"That sounds good to me," I agreed. The botanical garden looked like a very peaceful and relaxing place.

"Fine with me," Edward concurred.

"That was easy." Jacob grinned, scooping the brochures back into a stack and setting them aside. "I guess we've made a decision then."

He then fixed himself a snack and turned on the TV so we could pretend to watch whatever was on until Gustavo and Bruna finished up. They finally exited the bedroom, carrying bags full of feathers. We thanked them, and they headed on to their next assignment.

Jacob glanced at the brochure for Jardim Botanico again. "Looks like the botanical garden is just a few miles from here. Should we call a cab or just walk?"

"Let's walk. I want to see more of the city." Renesmee's enthusiasm was evident. She always relished the opportunity to see and experience anything new.

"I'd like to see more of the city too," I agreed.

"Some parts are nicer than others," Edward cautioned us. He had spent some time here before, when he was trying to track Victoria. "I'm fine with walking there, but be aware that we'll be walking through some favelas. There is a lot of drug-related crime in these areas. We'll probably pass by young men with machine guns - just don't act surprised, and of course we want to call as little attention to ourselves as possible."

"I'll just leave my purse here," I decided. It was mainly a prop anyway; I had nothing I needed to carry around. "No need to attract pickpockets."

Renesmee left her purse behind too, and we started off toward our destination.

We passed through some very nice neighborhoods, which would suddenly end, and we would step into a slum area with virtually no transition between the two. We passed through the first few favelas with no incidents, although I could tell Edward was putting on his poker face as he tried to ignore the thoughts of the criminals who surely surrounded us as we passed through their turf.

We did see some boys, who couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen years old, carrying machine guns in several of the favelas. These boys laughed and talked amongst themselves as the strolled down the streets, their demeanor at odds with the deadly weapons they carried. Some of them ignored us completely, others offered a friendly greeting which we returned.

A few minutes after we had entered a part of the city where the streets were more heavily populated by tourists, Edward suddenly spun around and confronted a man who had slipped up behind us and was getting a bit too close.

"Can I help you, sir?" Edward asked him in perfect Portuguese, in an authoritative tone that left no doubt the man had crossed some boundary. A pickpocket, probably.

The man appeared startled but recovered quickly and lunged at Edward, who stepped back a bit to lessen the force of impact as the man's fragile head hit his granite stomach. As the man was lunging at Edward, two of his buddies appeared from behind a vehicle parked on the street, threatening us with knives and demanding money. Edward effortlessly secured the wrists of the first man within his iron grip, while Jake rolled his eyes as he removed the knives from the hands of the other two men and punched each of them with just enough force to knock them to the ground, unconscious.

"A little help here, Jake?" Edward glanced meaningfully towards an approaching police officer.

Edward released one of the man's arms to Jake and together they wrestled him towards the officer, as if it were a struggle for the two of them to hold him back. Edward explained briefly to the officer that the man had tried to pick his pocket, and that the other two had attacked us. They handed the man over to the officer, who handcuffed him, and we continued on our way.

"Dad, what will the police do with those men? Will they go to jail?"

"Well, that's what _should_ happen, but that particular officer works for the same drug lord as the three thugs. He's planning to drop them off a couple blocks away."

We passed through another favela where twelve-year-olds were patrolling with machine guns. One of them seemed to be staring at Renesmee, and I could barely detect a low growl escaping Edward's throat. But he kept his poker face and greeted them politely as we passed.

Finally I could tell we were getting closer to our destination. The scenery began to improve, and we entered a neighborhood with the same name as the gardens. The area around the gardens was very nice, with obviously affluent homes. Edward told us the names of some Brazilian celebrities who lived there, but I did not recognize any of them.

The botanical garden was breathtakingly beautiful, well worth the walk to get there. There were very few other visitors while we were there, most likely due to the weather. The drizzle had stopped but it seemed to be threatening to rain again. We strolled along the paths together, enjoying the serenity of the place, and felt more comfortable talking with one another without the public surrounding us as they did on the streets.

"Have you two been to visit Nahuel yet?" I asked, remembering they had been planning to try to find him yesterday.

"Yes, we went yesterday," Renesmee was excited. She must have been bursting to tell me about it, but had been waiting for the appropriate time when we didn't have an audience. "We met his two sisters too," she added.

"You did? What are his sisters like?"

"Well, they were friendly with us, but they are still not exactly happy with the Volturi for killing their father. I feel sad for them - they have lost both of their parents. It is no wonder they are so bitter."

"Their father was not a very nice man, from what Nahuel told us, but I'm sure they were attached to him. He would have been the only family they had."

"We learned something else rather interesting too," she added, with a huge smile she could no longer contain. Jake was grinning from ear to ear as well.

"What's that?"

"The youngest one, Mishna, is gifted." We could tell by the tone of her voice that this was no ordinary gift.

"What can she do?" Edward beat me to the question.

"Her gift is telekinesis. She can move objects with her mind!" Renesmee was obviously impressed by the demonstration Mishna had given her. "She can cause them to levitate, or fly through the air, or spin around. Heavier objects seem to take more concentration. She said at first she could only do it with lightweight objects, but she's been practicing."

Edward and I both immediately recognized the battle potential, but he spoke first. "Can she move other people? Other vampires?"

"Not very well. The most she's ever lifted off the ground is about ninety pounds. Anyone heavier than that she might be able to make trip or stumble but she can't get them off the ground. She's been practicing though, and from what Shua said, she has made quite a bit of improvement over the last few years."

"Ninety pounds?" I considered the members of the guard. "She could probably lift Jane, maybe Alec, but that wouldn't do us much good."

"Renata is who she would need to move." Edward told us, just as I was having the same thought. "If we ever have to face the Volturi again, we'll definitely want Mishna on our side. If she could even make Renata trip, it might distract her enough for someone to get to Aro."

"She said she's never tried to use her ability in a real fight," Jacob added. "Maybe it would work better if she were really threatened, like when the Volturi came and Bella was suddenly able to throw her shield around _all_ of us. We told Mishna to keep practicing. She would love a chance to get back at the Volturi for killing her father."

"It would be nice if we could give them cell phones so we could contact them more easily," I thought aloud. "But I'm guessing they don't live in an area that would get service?"

Jacob laughed. "Actually our phones did have service there - two whole bars! But they wouldn't have any way to keep a phone charged up. They live in a very remote area. No electricity."

"We could get them solar powered chargers," Edward mused. "I think the cell phones are a great idea, Bella. I hope we won't ever need Mishna's assistance, but we do want to be prepared if the Volturi decide to come after us again. It would certainly save a lot of time if we could call her instead of sending someone to Brazil to hunt her down to deliver a message."

"You can get solar powered chargers?" Jake was incredulous.

"Sure," Edward explained, "If there's not one being marketed for the cell phone we buy, we can always adapt a regular charger ourselves. The technology isn't that complicated. It wouldn't take Jasper 10 minutes."

"We should stop by the mall after we finish here," suggested Renesmee, with a twinkle in her eye. She loved shopping almost as much as Alice, though she was more restrained when it came to spending. She didn't need new "things" to make her happy but she enjoyed looking and loved reporting her finds to Alice.

"They won't have those at the mall, will they?" Jacob asked, clearly hoping to find some way to bypass spending what easily turn into several hours at the mall.

"They probably won't have solar powered chargers at the mall," Edward answered. "But we should be able to pick up some phones there. When we get back to the island I'll check online for solar powered chargers, and if I can't find what we want I'll give Jasper a call. I'd like to get the phones and chargers to them while we're here though - we don't exactly have a shipping address for them."

"We were planning to hunt in the jungle next Wednesday," I told Nessie and Jake. "Would you like to come with us, and you can show us where they live?"

"Sure." She glanced at Jake who was nodding in agreement.

"Perfect," Edward agreed. "That should be enough time to have the chargers shipped here."

A light rain began to fall, just as Alice had predicted for today. We continued walking along the paths that meandered through the 348 acres that comprised the botanical gardens, reading the names of the plants as we passed by. They would remain ingrained in our perfect memories even though we were carrying on conversation unrelated to the sights around us at the same time. Well, at least 3 of us would remember them. Jake didn't have our perfect memory and didn't seem to be paying as much attention to the signs, though there was no way he was missing the sheer beauty of this place.

The mention of the mall and thoughts of shopping reminded me of Jake and Nessie's dilemma about Dartmouth. They had agreed to enroll and attend with us, but Jake had always had a difficult time accepting handouts from the Cullens and was refusing to allow us to buy them a house. He was also determined to eventually repay us for the cost of tuition and any other expenses we might cover while they're there. He was almost as bad about accepting gifts as I had been when I was human.

After Edward and I had married and survived the confrontation with the Volturi, I had come to accept how completely meaningless money was for our family. No matter how much we spent, there was always more, and even if it somehow ran out, I knew we would be just as happy without it. It just really didn't matter.

I did, however, understand Jake's point of view, probably more so even than Edward who could hear his thoughts, since Jake and I both grew up in homes with little money. He and Nessie had formed their own family unit, and he wanted them to be mature adults who could provide for themselves. He did not want to be dependent on his wife's family for finances. He was okay with occasional small gifts - we had often bought him clothes since he lost so many articles of clothing phasing. And he accepted that we would occasionally give larger gifts to our daughter, such as this vacation for them here in Rio, and the Aston Martin, which Jake had been borrowing frequently anyway. But he wanted them to be self-sufficient, to be able to provide a home for themselves out of their own earnings, and to be able to pay for their own college educations.

When Nessie was small and we still lived in Forks, Jake's "home" was with Billy - at least that's where he slept, most of the time.

In Wisconsin, he lived with us and the rest of the Cullens as a family member - he had his own room and helped out with chores the same as the rest of the family. As Nessie matured and he began to think about their future, he realized he needed to start saving money so they could eventually be self-sufficient. Edward of course overheard his thoughts and offered to pay him a wage for his "gardening duties" but he refused, not wanting to be paid for doing his fair share around the house. During our last year there he got a job as a mechanic at an auto-repair place and began a meager savings account.

During the 2 years we spent at La Push, he ran his own auto repair business from Billy's garage. He advertised in Forks and the business was doing quite well, as the only competition in the immediate area was known for its exorbitant prices. He had even added several of his pack members as employees - Embry would be taking over the business when he left. Jake made enough from his business to rent a house for himself and Nessie when they got married, and he was able to cover their own living expenses, but without much left over to add to their savings account. Nessie had taken on some baby-sitting jobs, but there were only a handful of families in La Push who were comfortable with the idea of a nine-year-old half-vampire baby-sitter being left in charge of their children, even if she was married to an Alpha wolf.

Their options when we move to New Hampshire to attend Dartmouth would be to rent a house or apartment and hope they could find jobs quickly enough to keep up with the rent, or live with Edward and me, or allow us to buy or rent a place for them. Letting us buy them something would be the simplest for everyone, but I understood why that wasn't their first choice.

"So, Nessie, Jake, have you given any more thought to where you want to live when we go to Dartmouth? It's only 3 weeks now until school starts. Have you done any research on apartments in the area?"

"We did look online for apartments," Nessie answered, "but everything in the area seems pretty expensive, especially considering we won't have any income when we first move. We were thinking we might live with you at first, if that offer's still open. It would just be for a few months, until we can find jobs and be sure we could keep up with rent to get our own place."

"Of course the offer's still open," Edward told her. "You two are always welcome to live with us and you can stay as long as you like. Our offer to buy you a house is still open too - even if you only want to live in it until you find a place to rent. Real estate is a good investment - our house in Hanover is already worth 40% more than I paid for it ten years ago."

"We don't want you to buy us a house," Jake insisted. "You spend too much on us already."

"As you wish. We'll support you in your decision, but you know we're always ready to help if you ask."

"Dad, why did you buy a house in Hanover ten years ago? We lived in Forks ten years ago - that's when I was born."

Edward smiled at his daughter. "Well, when your mother and I graduated from Forks High School ten years ago, we had been accepted at Dartmouth and had considered attending there. I had made arrangements, hoping to convince her to remain human long enough to have the human experience of attending college, though I think she viewed college as more of a cover story for our location during her time as a newborn since she was planning to be changed shortly after our wedding. She didn't even know I'd bought a house there until after we were married. But then you came along, and your mother was a newborn with red eyes, so we postponed our college plans."

"Sorry I messed up your plans, Mom and Dad." She smiled, knowing full well that we preferred the way things had worked out.

"You didn't mess up anything," Edward told her firmly. "The ability to have children was what I most feared your mother would regret losing if I changed her. When I realized I could have both of you forever, that was the happiest moment of my life."

"You were the best surprise ever," I assured her. "I was in no rush to go to college. We have forever for such things."

"Believe me, you _were_ a surprise," Jake added. "I don't think anyone was more surprised than me. Everything in my life seemed to be going wrong, and then I looked into your eyes and everything was right with the world." He leaned down and kissed her gently.

She laughed softly. "I seem to recall your very first reaction to me was 'Throw it out the window!'"

Jake actually blushed - something which did not happen often. "You _remember_ that? You were what, one minute old? I had really kind of hoped you had forgotten that, or at least that you hadn't understood what I was talking about."

"Of course I remember. I remember everything, silly. But it's okay, Jake, I knew you didn't mean it, you and Dad were just worried about Mom." She touched his face and showed him the memory. I knew what she was showing him because I had seen this one before - Edward's face looking at her with so much love, his facial expression shifting to agony as he looked past her to where I was lying, near death. A flash of the ceiling as Edward started to hand her to Jacob so he could start my transformation, Jacob's reply, "Throw it out the window!", Edward's frustrated expression which was soon replaced by an image of Rosalie's face looking down at her with such adoration. She had asked me about it when she was just a few weeks old; I was the one who had explained to her that they were just worried about me. She had understood immediately.

We continued walking along the picturesque paths, discussing our plans for our upcoming move to the Hanover area, our plans to stop in Chicago on our way there, and our class schedules at Dartmouth.

Our class schedules should work out well with us sharing the house. Jake and Nessie's classes were all in the morning and early afternoon; Edward and I had signed up only for night classes due to the limitations imposed on us by the sunlight. Edward and I would have plenty of alone time at night while they slept, and Jake and Nessie would get some alone time while Edward and I were in class. We would stay away from the house between classes and ensure they had some private time each evening.

Even with me blocking them from Edward's mind-reading abilities, there could be no real privacy in a house where everyone had superhuman hearing abilities. I could imagine my mortification if Charlie had ever been able to hear my nighttime conversations with Edward, or worse yet, if he had been able to read my mind, even accidentally. Our "talented" family was all Nessie had ever known, so she was accustomed to having little privacy. She never seemed to mind that her dad could hear all her thoughts as she was growing up, but understandably she did desire privacy for her intimate moments with Jacob, and Edward was more than happy to avoid overhearing those moments. Over the years he has heard and seen much more than he would have liked regarding his siblings' and parents' intimate relationships.

After a few hours of our leisurely stroll and pleasant conversation, we realized it was nearly 5pm and the gardens would be closing to the public. We made our way to the exit and opted to take a cab to the mall - we'd already had enough sightseeing of the city streets for one day.


	6. Mall

**A/N: To 'Shield My Loves' -- a bit of jealousy here for you. :)**

* * *

Chapter 6: Mall

When we reached the mall we decided to split up to save time -- Jacob was eager to stop by the food court to eat, and Renesmee wanted to cover the entire mall to get an overview of the shopping opportunities so she could decide if she wanted to return before their vacation time was up.

I let them know I was dropping my shield, and Edward and I headed off in search of phones. It was a relief to let my shield collapse back into head. I'd been shielding for about 8 hours straight, most of those hours with moving targets as we walked around the city and the botanical gardens. It had been a while since I had gotten this much of a workout.

We found a kiosk for our mobile phone company and added four lines of service to our plan and selected four phones. As we stood there waiting for the salesperson to get everything finalized, I noticed Edward pinching the bridge of his nose, a sure sign that something was bothering him.

"What's wrong?"

"What?"

"You look stressed."

"Oh." He ran his hand through his hair and then dropped his hand and tried to look more relaxed. "It's just that there are a lot of people here, and there's a high rate of crime and violence in this city. I think I'm starting to get a headache." I felt terrible for not realizing earlier how difficult this must be for him -- not only was he surrounded by the thoughts of thousands of people, but considering the crime rate of this city he must also be hearing a lot more unpleasant and violent thoughts.

The salesperson handed back his credit card and gave him a receipt. Edward took the bag with our purchases in one hand, and my hand in the other, and we started back toward the food court.

"I'm sorry, Edward. I shouldn't have insisted we walk this morning. We should have taken a cab and we could have spent less time walking through the city and more time in the gardens where it wasn't so crowded. That would have been easier on you, wouldn't it?"

"Don't apologize. I wanted Nessie to see the sights, and we had enough time at the gardens. It's not a problem for me to be in crowds -- I'm used to that. It's just the types of thoughts I've been hearing today that were bothering me."

"Would you like me to shield the area now? Would that help?"

"No, I need to be aware of what's going on around us. I don't want to be caught off guard if another group of pickpockets comes our way. Or worse. It's easier to diffuse those situations without exposing ourselves if I can hear them coming."

"So what have you been hearing at the mall that is so bothersome?"

"Mostly some people involved in the drug trade. They blend in easily with the rest of the public in the mall, but their thoughts are heinous. They place no value on the lives of others." He lowered his voice even more. "Some of their minds are similar to those I once hunted. They're difficult to ignore."

"Is there someone here in danger? Shouldn't we help them if we can?"

"Bella, we can't involve ourselves in every dispute between drug lords and their underlings. We can't go around playing superhero. The job would never be done, and we would risk exposing ourselves each time. Besides, I don't think they're going to attack anyone in the mall. They're planning for future confrontations, and their 'victims' are probably as sinister as they are."

I knew he was right, but it must be awful to hear those thoughts, to know what they were planning, to know that you could prevent it, and have to let it go. I thought back to that night in Port Angeles when he had rescued me from those awful men and asked me to distract him so that he wouldn't go back and hurt or kill them. I definitely hadn't wanted him to kill anyone, but those men were probably still out on the streets. Had they assaulted someone else after I escaped? "I wonder whatever happened to those men in Port Angeles. I hope they didn't attack someone else after you rescued me."

"I guess I never told you about that, did I?"

"What? They did? Or you went back? I thought I distracted you!" Surely he hadn't gone back and killed those men?

He smiled. "Oh, you did, quite thoroughly, I might add. But when I got home I talked to Carlisle and we went back there together. I showed Carlisle where the ringleader was, and then ran back to Forks to watch you sleep before I could do anything I might have regretted later. Carlisle sedated him and took him to Portland where he left him in an alley outside the police department, and then called in an anonymous tip. He was a serial rapist and murderer, wanted in 2 states. He was tried in Texas and the last I heard he is sitting on death row."

"Wow. What about the other guys? There were four of them."

"The other three were so intoxicated they didn't know what they were doing. They should be harmless without their leader." He lowered his voice. "I still wanted to kill them but I let Carlisle handle it his way."

We arrived back at the food court just as Jacob was finishing his meal.

"Nessie's on her way," Edward informed us, tapping his temple. We sat down with Jake to wait. I was grateful that she was a much faster shopper than Alice.

I noticed Edward was pinching the bridge of his nose again, and he was looking really distressed.

"What is it now?"

"I think I'm going to have to intervene. That guy over there," he nodded toward a man standing near the restroom entrances, "is planning to stalk that lady." he gestured towards a young woman in her twenties who was sitting alone at a table in the food court. "He's planning to follow her out to her vehicle, hijack it, and take her somewhere to rape and murder her." He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. "She's thinking about her two young children at home and how much they'll like the items she's purchased for them today."

"We have to help her," I insisted. "What should we do?"

Edward growled.

I looked up and saw Nessie coming toward us.

"He's looking at Nessie now," Edward informed us. "And I don't like his thoughts _at all_."

Nessie sat down with us and gave Jake a quick kiss hello. I noticed the man's gaze returned to the young woman Edward had pointed out earlier. I guess he was smart enough not pick a fight with Jake. I quickly filled Nessie in on what was going on.

"You wanna kill him, or should I?" Jake asked.

"I _want_ to, but I'm not going to," Edward replied. "And neither are you. We have to do something, though."

"Okay, so we don't kill him, but we could mess him up pretty good," suggested Jake. "Then he couldn't follow her."

"He'll just go after someone else later on," Edward responded. His brow furrowed slightly. "She's getting ready to leave soon, We need to stall until we come up with a better plan. Bella, can you go talk to her? Keep her occupied a few minutes?"

"Me?"

"You look less threatening than Jacob and I do. She would probably run if one of us approached her."

I rolled my eyes. "You're not that scary."

"Okay, so she might think we're hitting on her," he conceded.

"More likely that she'd be wishing you were." I teased, knowing full well the power of Edward's unintentional charm.

"Whichever. You need to hurry."

He was right, the lady had risen from her seat. I began walking quickly in the general direction of her table, as if I were headed for the mall exit. She began to collect her shopping bags which she had left on the floor around her seat while she ate. I noted the logo on one of the bags -- it was from a specialty store I remembered seeing near the mobile phone place, on the other end of the mall on the second floor.

I started to walk past her, then stopped suddenly, pretending the bag had caught my attention. I expressed excitement at seeing she had a bag from that store, claiming I had been hunting for that store and couldn't find it. I was getting more comfortable with my Portuguese -- spending a day with people speaking it all around me had helped tremendously with my fluency. The lady was very friendly and patiently explained how to get to the store from the food court and even engaged in some small talk as well.

As I was walking over to the woman and conversing with her, I was also listening to the conversation back at our table.

_"He seems rather nervous and agitated. He's wanting to get out of here quickly." I could tell Edward was listening to his thoughts, trying to find something useful. "He's escaped from prison and he's worried the police are looking for him. He's upset with Bella for delaying his target because he wants get out of here before he runs into anyone in law enforcement."_

_"I saw some police officers at the east end of the mall, where I just came from." Renesmee told them._

_In my peripheral vision I saw Edward lean his head slightly in that direction, and a smile soon crept across his face. "They're looking for him."_

_"We could hold him down until they get here," Jacob suggested._

_"There are too many people in here. We don't want to make a public spectacle of ourselves," Edward reminded him. "And if the police see us with him they may question us about our involvement and how we knew he was a criminal."_

_"Let him follow the woman outside," Nessie proposed. "We can follow at a distance and intercept him before he gets to her, and leave him in the back of a police cruiser. I see two of them out there in the parking lot."_

_"Not a bad idea." Edward looked proud of his daughter._

_"I like it," Jake agreed._

I heard Edward growling again.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the man still waiting near the restroom entrances, but he seemed to be focused more on me than on the woman who was giving me directions. Yes, the man's lewd eyes -- and thoughts -- were now on me.

Just then, I felt Edward's arm slip around my back. His jealousy and protectiveness were absurd, but so adorable. To be honest, I was surprised he lasted as long as he did. I wasn't sure how long the man had been staring at me -- probably since I started talking to the lady. At least Edward wasn't growling anymore. He had positioned himself so as to block the man's view of me, and wrapped his arm around me to claim me as his own. He had always been rather possessive of me, but that was fine -- after all, I was his, and he was mine. I smiled up at him, and he squeezed me just a bit tighter.

I let the lady know he was my husband and asked her to repeat the directions for him, since his memory was so much better than mine. When she met Edward's eyes, her own eyes went unfocused and she seemed to be having trouble concentrating, but somehow managed to repeat her instructions. We thanked her, then went back to Jake and Nessie. As soon as we sat down, we saw the man start stalking his original target, who had just exited the mall.

It was dark outside now. No humans would be likely to notice him pursuing her, but the darkness also provided some cover for us.

We followed him out of the mall, splitting up and walking between different rows of cars so that we wouldn't be directly behind him. We picked up speed, running silently just slightly faster than human speed. Nessie and I ran ahead to the police car which was parked several rows over. I broke out the window on the front passenger's side, unlocked the doors, and retrieved a pair of handcuffs. Just then, Edward and Jake showed up with the man, who one of them had apparently knocked unconscious. I suspected he would have some serious bruising by tomorrow. We opened the back door, slipped him in, handcuffed him to the inside of the cruiser, and closed the door. I cleaned up the broken glass at vampire speed, and we moved a safe distance away so no one would see us hanging around the police car.

"I can't wait to see the looks on the cops' faces when they get back to their car," laughed Jake. "That's going to be priceless!"

"Are we waiting for them?" asked Edward. "I had been thinking of heading back to the island."

I kind of wanted to see the looks on their faces too, but I knew Edward's "headache" wasn't going to subside until we got back to the solitude of the island, and the thought of being alone with Edward again after a full day of behaving myself in front of Jake and Nessie was extremely appealing. "I'm ready to head back too, but you and Nessie can stay a while longer if you want," I told Jacob.

Nessie pressed her palm to Jake's face, and he smiled and kissed her forehead in response. "Nah, I think we're ready to leave too."

* * *

Edward and I leaped from the boat and I chased him into the house. He jumped onto the big white bed, landing with a force that jarred the entire house. I paused briefly when I entered the room, taking in the magnificence that was my shirtless Edward. I jumped into his lap and his arms wrapped around me. We kissed even more passionately than we had done in the boat on the way over. But although his kisses were every bit as enthusiastic as mine, I could still somehow sense that something was bothering him -- his mind was not one hundred percent with me.

I pulled back slightly, my hands still around his neck. "What's wrong, Edward?"

"Nothing. Nothing I want to think about right now. I'd much prefer that you continue distracting me." He trailed kisses lustfully down my neck.

I gasped with pleasure but did not allow him to derail me. "Something is bothering you. Whatever it is, we need to talk through this. Your attention is divided right now."

He bowed his head but raised his eyes to meet mine. "You know me too well."

"So what is it?"

"Just lingering stress from the mall, I suppose," he answered vaguely.

"Too many voices? Too many violent voices? Do you still have a headache?" I ran my fingers gently through his hair, trying unsuccessfully to soothe his mind with gentle caresses.

"That's part of it, the memory of all those thoughts. I wish I could purge them from my brain." He pinched the bridge of his nose yet again.

I removed his hand from his nose and took his hands in mine. "What's the rest?" I knew there was something bigger, something that was really bothering him, that he didn't want to burden me with, but I needed to understand so I could try to help him through it. Sometimes it was like pulling teeth to get him to share his problems. Sometimes I wished there was a way I could read _his_ mind.

"I don't want to say it," he muttered so softly that I wasn't sure if he was speaking to himself or to me.

"You can tell me anything. You know you can trust me." I used my thumbs to massage circles on the backs of his hands.

"Yes, never doubt that, love, but..." He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled sharply. "I enjoyed myself." I internally cringed at the self-loathing I heard in his voice.

"What do you mean?" He enjoyed what?

"When I beat that man senseless tonight -- I enjoyed it."

Ah, he was feeling guilty about that. I tried to shift his focus to the positive outcome. "I enjoyed helping that woman too. That man deserved what he got. He needs to be kept off the streets. You saved an innocent woman from a horrible fate, and you saved two children from losing their mother. That's nothing to be ashamed of or feel guilty about -- I'm _very_ proud of you for deciding to intervene."

"I don't think you understand. When I was hitting him I wasn't thinking of helping anyone. I was remembering his thoughts of what he wanted to do to you and Nessie. I was _enjoying_ inflicting pain on him." His facial muscles were tense and his fists were clenched. "You don't know how close I was to killing him. I wanted it so intensely. I'm not sure what stopped me, but I wanted it and I would have enjoyed killing him immensely." He sighed. "I am no better than he is. I took pleasure in inflicting pain on him just as he enjoys doing the same to his victims."

"Your conscience is what stopped you. The difference between you and that man is like the difference between day and night. You have a conscience and he doesn't. He is a monster who gets pleasure from hurting and killing innocent people, and you are my wonderful loving husband whose conscience bothers him when he hears a young woman about to be attacked. You didn't select him randomly because you were seeking out someone to hurt, and you didn't even go after him because of his thoughts about me -- you intervened because of his intentions to hurt that woman, and you stuck to the plan you and Nessie came up with. The man's thoughts about me may have allowed you to enjoy knocking him out, but you would have done it anyway because it was the best way to get him into the police cruiser and off the streets without making a scene that might be noticed by humans. If you enjoyed a little jealous revenge along the way, it doesn't make you a bad person."

"You're right that he's a monster who inflicts pain and kills for pleasure. But you don't seem to accept that I have been that same monster. Bella, I spent nearly four years killing people on a regular basis, purely for my own pleasure, to satisfy my bloodlust. I have murdered far more than that man ever has. I know you see it as somewhat justified because I may have saved a life for each one I took. But my purpose was not to save lives; it was to indulge for my own physical pleasure. Saving other lives in the process was an attempt at assuaging my conscience, but make no mistake, I knew what I was doing. My motivation was far from honorable."

"You can't keep beating yourself up about that. It _does_ mean something that you hunted only the most criminal minds for your victims. Even though you were indulging yourself with human blood, you were still carefully protecting the innocent, and you probably saved far more lives than you took because many of them were probably repeat offenders. And your conscience did eventually lead you to give up that lifestyle. Regardless, it is in the past, it can't be changed, and you need to let it go and leave it in the past. You have not killed a human in eighty-five years. How many vampires on the face of this planet can say that? I'm sure you could count them on your fingers -- maybe even on one hand."

He managed a small smile. "You're right, it belongs in the past and I need to leave it there." He leaned his head over onto my shoulder. I put my arms around him and started rubbing his back. "It's just been especially hard today," he continued. "My mind became attuned to the thoughts of killers and rapists during my rebellious years, and as much as I tried to relegate the thoughts of the crowd to background noise today, it was like the thoughts from the most vile minds were yelling at me, taunting them to come after them. It's not about bloodlust anymore -- I wouldn't want to defile myself with any part of those men -- but their minds still call out to me and it reminds me of the monster I was, the monster I could easily be again. And any time I hear someone thinking profane and base things about you I honestly want to kill them. I've been exercising such control for so long. It's a miracle that vile Mike Newton survived high school. When I took out my frustrations on that man today it felt so good, even though I was still restraining myself, but you don't know how bad I wanted to let go."

"But you did keep control. You didn't seriously hurt him." I pulled back from our embrace to look him in the eye. "You've learned from your past and you now have more control than anyone, except maybe Carlisle, and you're not far behind him. He's just had more years to perfect it."

"You really know how to inflate my ego, don't you? I don't ever deserve to be compared to Carlisle." Self-deprecation aside, he was smiling now, and I could tell our conversation had indeed provided a much-needed ego-boost. He was definitely in a much better mood now.

"Was Mike really that bad? I always thought of him as a harmless puppy dog who liked to follow me around."

"Yes, his thoughts were that bad. I don't think he would have ever acted on them, at least not without your permission, but he did wish. His imaginings about you were even more X-rated than Jessica's fantasies about me. Most of the guys in school had those sorts of thoughts about you at some point, but Mike was definitely the most persistent." He chuckled lightly.

"What's funny?"

"It's not really funny, but... I was just thinking about how he always used to try to imagine you naked, and how his mental images pale in comparison to the true beauty of your body, and how he'll never know that, but I do."

I shuddered slightly at the thought of Mike imagining me naked and then pushed all thoughts of Mike and Jessica from my mind. "Can I ask you something else?"

"Of course."

"If it was so hard for you today to not kill that man for his thoughts about me, when he could not possibly cause me any true harm, how did you manage to stop yourself from hurting or killing those men in Port Angeles, when I was human and they could have actually killed me? I don't think I've ever fully comprehended how hard that must have been for you."

"It _was_ hard. When you first got in the car I was planning _how_ I would do it -- not _if_ -- and I was ready to get out of the car, but one look at you and I realized I couldn't do it in front of you, and I couldn't leave you scared and alone somewhere while I went back to take care of them. My mind kept going back to them, but you distracted me that night more times than you know. When I told you I had a bit of a temper, that was the understatement of the century. I think what really held me back was that I was afraid that if you knew me to be a murderer I would lose my chance with you. You are so pure and perfect, and you deserve so much better than a murderer. I wanted to try to be good enough for you, at least from that point forward."

"You are more than good enough for me." I kissed him gently on the lips. "You are perfect." I let my fingertips roam across his perfect face as I kissed him again.

"I'm hardly perfect," he murmured, his lips close enough that they brushed against mine as he spoke, "but I'll agree that we're perfect for each other." He then rubbed his lips against mine just barely touching, in a side to side motion, teasing me with the lightest of touches. "Now that we've talked this out, do you think we could resume our earlier activities?"

"You feel better now?" I confirmed.

"Yes, you always make me feel better." His lips had made their way across my neck and his warm mouth was now closing in on my earlobe. "But I wouldn't mind just a little more distraction..."

"I think I can help with that." I pushed him back onto the bed and started kissing him senseless. I now had his undivided attention and I planned to keep it for the rest of the night. There were many ways to show him how much I admired my perfect-for-me husband.

I think nights will always be my favorite part of the day.

* * *

**A/N: This will be the last chapter set in Rio. Next chapter they will be back in La Push visiting with family and preparing for their move. Then they will visit Chicago on their way to Dartmouth. The Chicago chapter(s) will be from Edward's POV. I have several chapters planned with them at Dartmouth, and I promise the Volturi will show up eventually. :)**

**If you've read this far I'd really love it if you could leave a review and let me know what you think. What is your favorite part so far? What would you like to see more of? What can I improve on? Have you found any mistakes (typos, spelling, grammar, anything out of character or not in canon, anything blatantly wrong in my descriptions of Rio (aside from my fictitious mall))? I really appreciate all reviews and intend to reply to each one. Thanks!!  
**


	7. Charlie Knows

Chapter 7: Charlie Knows

I carried the last eight bags of groceries into the kitchen and set them down on the countertop. Edward had the bags he carried in already unpacked and put away, and we made quick work of putting away the groceries from the ones I had just set down. Our refrigerator was ridiculously full for two people who didn't eat, especially considering that we would be effectively be moving out of this house later tonight. We had been home from our anniversary trip for almost a week, and our days had been busy with finalizing our travel plans and making arrangements for our move.

I talked to Dad on the phone yesterday, and he had insisted that he and Sue come over today to help us finish packing. We couldn't tell him that having to move at human speed would slow us down considerably, so we completed most of the work during the night, and were looking forward to some time with them and some other family and friends this evening.

Nessie, Jake, Dad, Sue, and Seth would be coming over this afternoon, and we had invited the rest of the wolves to join us for supper this evening. I suppose it had turned into sort of a going-away party we were throwing for ourselves. It wouldn't meet Alice's standards, with the lack of decorations, but she wasn't here. Lots of food and some friendly conversation were all that were needed for a successful party with this group.

I looked at the clock. A few minutes past noon. We had a couple hours to work on food prep before our family members would start arriving. Edward and I worked together to whip up some salads, casseroles, and desserts to go with the steak we were planning for this evening. The wolves had enormous appetites so we were quite literally preparing enough food to feed a small army. We worked silently, for the most part, since we were both holding our breath in order to avoid inhaling the stench of the human food we were preparing. It was hard to believe I once enjoyed eating this stuff.

We had helped Nessie and Jake finish packing yesterday, and the moving company had already come and picked up their things. They had packed separately just the personal items they would need to spend tonight at our house and tomorrow night in Chicago.

Edward and I would be leaving tonight after visiting with our guests, and we would be driving my Ferrari to Chicago. Mapquest estimated a 34 hour 18 minute travel time for the 2235 miles from La Push to Chicago, but at the speed we would be driving it should take no more than fourteen to fifteen hours, even taking city traffic and possible road construction into consideration.

I hadn't been too excited when I first received the red Ferrari for my birthday ten years ago, but I had quickly fallen in love with the speed and I had developed a sentimental attachment to it because of it being Edward's first gift to me in my "new life". He had suggested that we could fly for this trip instead of driving, and get new cars after arriving in New Hampshire, but I wanted to keep my car. I didn't care if it was ten years old.

Edward, however, was intent on replacing his Volvo. We had only kept it this long because both of us had a sentimental attachment to it as well. We had so many memories of time spent together in that car early in our relationship, during my human years. It was with that car that he had rescued me from certain death in Port Angeles. We were in that car together when he first acknowledged to me that he was a vampire and I told him that it didn't matter. It was with that car that he picked me up for school in the mornings, and that car was where we sat and talked for hours as we got to know one another better.

However, Edward was extremely excited about the idea of getting a newer, faster car for use at Dartmouth, where a flashy car would not stand out nearly as much as it would in Forks or La Push. Even a twelve year old Volvo stood out as one of the nicer vehicles in this town. I hated the idea of selling the Volvo, as did he, but it didn't make sense to take it with us across the country to college. So we had come up with a compromise - we would give it to Charlie.

Charlie would be retiring from the police force soon and wouldn't have the cruiser anymore, so he would be needing his own car. We still hadn't told him yet so we would need to convince him this afternoon to accept it as a hand-me-down gift. It seemed like the perfect solution - Dad gets a car he needs, Edward gets his new dream car, and we can visit our beloved Volvo whenever we come back to Forks to see Charlie.

Jake and Nessie would be driving the Aston Martin to Chicago tomorrow. Unlike us, they both needed their sleep at night, so they would be doing most of their driving during the daytime, which would work out well to allow Edward and me to have some time alone in his old Chicago home before the "kids" arrived.

Edward had his new car already ordered and it would be delivered to our home in Hanover the day after we move in. He told me what kind of car it was, but it was something I had never heard of before and I didn't pay much attention to the detailed description. He had been practically drooling over the pictures and specs of this car, and as he rambled on about the specs, my mind was more on how cute he looked when he was excited about a new toy. For a few minutes he really seemed like a seventeen year old boy.

I let my mind continue to wander while I chopped, diced, and stirred, mentally planning for all the things we still needed to do before leaving tonight, thinking about the upcoming trip, speculating on what we might find in Elizabeth's closet, and wondering what my classes at Dartmouth would be like. Soon we had the food prep nearly finished and it was almost time for Charlie and Sue to arrive.

We went into the family room and set out several empty cardboard moving boxes and set the room up to look like we had been busy packing all day.

"Charlie and Sue are almost here," Edward informed me. "Seth is right behind them."

"I'm going to miss Seth," I told him.

I was expecting him to agree, but he gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look instead.

"Is something wrong?" I demanded. I had not seen anything close to this look since the day Alice had the vision about the Volturi coming to destroy us all. This didn't seem quite _that_ bad, but it was still going to be bad. I could tell.

"Charlie knows." Edward was looking at me intently.

"What?" A chill went down my spine.

"He knows. All I can sense from him is that he is confused and worried and wanting to ask us something, but Sue was remembering their visit with Billy yesterday. Apparently Billy was mumbling about werewolves and vampires when they visited him in the hospital. He must have been pretty heavily medicated."

"What are we going to do?" I couldn't believe Charlie was going to figure it out _now_, was going to ask us for details _now_, after ten years of careful "need to know".

"I guess we'll answer his questions." Edward seemed too calm. "I thought he was still wanting to keep all of this on a 'need to know' basis but his mind is very inquisitive tonight."

"I remember how I felt when Jacob first told me what you were. I was in denial right up until you admitted to me that I was right. Hearing the truth and having it confirmed are two very different things. Maybe we could still convince him that Billy was just talking nonsense. I don't want to give the Volturi any additional reason to come after us, and I definitely don't want them after Charlie!" I was getting pretty worked up "Why are you so calm?"

Edward's response surprised me. "I don't really think it would place him in any more danger with the Volturi. He is married to a Quileute woman, after all, and she's a member of their tribal council at that. Aro didn't mind the Quileutes knowing our secret, and he already knows that Charlie has remained in your life after your change. If the Volturi decide to come after us again they will likely manufacture their own pretense for punishing us regardless of what we actually have or have not done."

Maybe he was right. Having a word for what we are wouldn't really give Charlie much more knowledge than he already has, and as the spouse of a council member it would be expected that he would be privy to the secrets held by the tribe,

Edward continued, "I think it would be difficult to deny the truth to Charlie at this point - he has seen a great deal more over the last ten years than what you saw in those few seconds when I was rescuing you from Tyler's van. Also, your dad has never wanted us to lie to him, he just wanted to be spared the details. I believe he made that abundantly clear. You remember how angry he got when we tried to tell him Renesmee was my niece. The main reason we've kept the truth from him is because he hasn't wanted to hear it. He hasn't wanted any details and we were concerned about how he might react if he knew. But if he's changed his mind and he wants to know - I don't really see any harm in it."

"I guess you're right," I admitted. I was starting to calm down just a bit. "I just hope he doesn't have a heart attack like Harry did when Seth and Leah phased in front of him. This 'need to know' thing has been working so well." I heard Charlie's cruiser pull into our driveway but the car doors did not immediately open.

"I don't think he'll be in any danger of a heart attack. He has seen so much already, and he already knows there is something supernatural going on. He's had ten years to get used to this. I don't think the details will send him over the edge. We can talk to Sue first and see if she thinks he can handle it. I'm not sure what she may have already told him."

"That's a good idea. What's she thinking right now?"

He grimaced. "They're kissing. I'm _not_ staying in her head for that."

"Allow me to distract you from those disturbing thoughts." I grinned as I pulled him to me and initiated a long, slow kiss that left us both wanting more.

We were jolted back to reality by a knock at the door. We hadn't even noticed the sounds of the car doors opening or the footsteps approaching our front door. "I love it when you distract me like that," he breathed.

I reluctantly disentangled myself from Edward and opened the door to hug Charlie and then Sue. Seth was just pulling into the drive so I held the door open for him as Charlie and Sue had a seat in the family room. Seth sat down on the other side of Charlie, who had already found the remote and turned the TV to the sports channel. It didn't look like he was planning to launch into his questions immediately.

"Sue, would you mind giving us a hand in the kitchen for a bit?" I asked innocently. "We were just finishing up some preparations for our meal this evening. We invited both packs to come eat with us so we're preparing a lot more than normal."

Sue rose from her seat and accompanied us into the kitchen, looking relieved to have escaped the sports channel so quickly. She looked around at the spotless kitchen in confusion.

"We've actually already finished the food prep," I told her quietly, "but we wanted to talk to you about Charlie."

"I understand Billy mentioned vampires when you two visited him yesterday." Edward chimed in. "I believe Charlie's planning to ask us about it tonight. Do you think he can handle the truth? How much have you told him already?"

"Yes," Sue acknowledged, "Billy was a bit high on narcotics yesterday. He kept muttering something about vampires and werewolves - nothing specific, but those words were recognizable and he kept repeating what he was saying over and over. I mentioned to Dr. Snow that Billy had been watching some horror movies recently, but I don't think Charlie bought that explanation. He asked me after we got home if the Cullens were the vampires Billy was referring to. I told him that whatever your secret was, it was not mine to share, and that he should ask you himself if he really wanted to know about your involvement in the supernatural world. As to whether he can handle it - I think he can. He has adjusted to so much already - both of us have - and I'll be there to help him make sense of everything. I think he's going to drive himself crazy if he keeps trying to match up vampire folklore to what he knows about your family."

"I remember that feeling," I told her. "When Jacob told me the Cullens were vampires, I went home and researched vampires on the internet. There were several common traits that seemed accurate - the superhuman strength, speed, and beauty - but there were even more that didn't make sense at all, like being burned by the sun, sleeping in coffins, and all that."

"Do you think he'll come to the same conclusion you did?" Edward asked me.

"You mean that it doesn't matter?" I chuckled, remembering Edward's initial anger at my unexpected reaction, and then grew more serious. "I certainly hope so. I can't imagine him cutting himself off from us after all this time."

"He loves you, Bella," Sue stated adamantly. "Nothing will change that." She turned to Edward. "He has grown to care for you, too, Edward. I know you didn't get off to a good start with him, but he has come to think of you as a son. He sees how happy you have made Bella, and he has accepted you as part of the family. I don't think that will change either. And you know Nessie can do no wrong in his eyes. He would never do anything to endanger his relationship with her."

"Do you think he'll question us about it tonight?" I asked her. "I hate to drop this on him right before we move, but if we're going to do this I'd much rather do it in person and get it over with."

"I'm pretty sure he will," Edward sounded confident. "Even though I can't hear his exact thoughts, I can't recall ever sensing him being this inquisitive before. He's probably just trying to figure out how to ask us. I don't think he's even paying attention to the game right now."

"I think you're right," Sue agreed. "He's been struggling with this ever since we visited Billy yesterday and I think he's reached the point where he feels like he needs to know. It will be hard for him to know how to start that conversation, but I do think he will probably ask tonight. We should wait for him to bring it up though, just in case he changes his mind about how much he wants to know."

"Let's go back to the family room," Edward suggested, "and start packing up the books and DVDs. We can try to give him some openings to talk about it if he wants to."

Sue and I both nodded in agreement, and we all headed back into the family room. Charlie and Seth were still sitting on the sofa, staring silently at the commercial playing on TV. Seth looked up at me meaningfully. I knew with his sensitive hearing he had heard our entire conversation. I was glad my stepbrother was here - he was more comfortable with us than any of the other wolves, aside from Jacob, of course. Hopefully Seth's calm demeanor would serve to help temper Charlie's reaction, just as Jacob's presence had helped when Charlie first saw me after my transformation.

"Thanks for your help, Sue." I said as we re-entered the family room. "That went much faster with an extra pair of hands."

"No problem. What can we do next? Should we start packing in here?"

"Yes, that would be great," Edward answered. "We have the other rooms nearly finished. We're not taking any of this furniture with us but we still need to pack up all of these books and DVDs." He gestured toward the floor-to-ceiling shelving that was built in to the east wall of the room. They ran the length of the room, about eighteen feet, and they were nearly full. "Don't worry about the knickknacks - Bella can pack any she wants to take with us. I don't particularly care about any of them."

We weren't planning to sell this house - we were going to leave it furnished, and we would spend the night here whenever we returned to visit Charlie. So we didn't really need to pack everything, just the things we really wanted to take with us. We didn't actually need to take all these books and DVDs, but they would be the easiest thing for Charlie & Sue to 'help' us with.

Sue grabbed a box and got to work. "Charlie, were you planning to help?"

"Sure, sure." He sighed as he rose from the sofa, and began filling another box with books from the middle of the shelves.

Seth made himself useful assembling more moving boxes. The stack of flattened unassembled boxes was about three feet high and happened to be right next to where Seth was already sitting.

Edward and I started at the far corner of the room, pulling small stacks of DVDs off the shelves at human speed.

"Are you okay, Charlie?" Edward asked. "You seem like your mind is somewhere else. Is something bothering you?"

"No, I'm okay," Charlie said unconvincingly. "Just thinking about Billy. We went to see him in the hospital yesterday."

"How is he doing?" I asked. "When we talked to Jacob yesterday morning he said Billy had been in a lot of pain and they were planning to increase the dosage of his painkillers."

"He didn't seem to be in any pain when we were there. I think they might have increased the dosage a bit too much. He seemed to be talking out of his head. I'm not sure he even knew we were there."

"Oh, well I sure hope they get that straightened out. What all did he say?" I asked.

He hesitated. Did he really want to ask us about this? "Nothing that made any sense. Some gibberish about werewolves... and... vampires." He stared intently at his half-filled box of books and focused on rearranging the ones already in the box.

"What did he say about werewolves and vampires?" Edward asked carefully. I knew he was subtly letting Charlie know that we were okay with the word "vampires", and that we were okay with discussing the topic if Charlie wanted to continue..

"Nothing much." Charlie continued fiddling with the books in his box. "Just kept repeating those words over and over." He paused and no one said anything for a long five seconds or so, and then Charlie continued. "I guess I know why he would be talking about werewolves, but I was kind of wondering about the, um, vampires." He cringed a bit as he said the word, then paused again. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Bella?" He asked softly, looking up at me cautiously. I had never seen him look so vulnerable. Sue had walked up behind him and placed her hand reassuringly on his right shoulder.

I looked him in the eye. "You're sure you want to ask us about this, Dad? We'll tell you as much as you need to know, but I'm not sure how much that is."

"Yes, I think I need to know now. Maybe not _all_ the details, but I need to know what Billy meant." He reached up and placed his left hand on top of Sue's, holding her hand in place against his shoulder. I was glad he had her for support.

"You're wondering if he was talking about us?" I asked gently.

I heard his heart rate speed up. He looked embarrassed but nodded. "I've known there was something odd going on for the last ten years - obviously - but I've never tried to figure out what it was. I really didn't want to know. I've just been so grateful to have you and Nessie in my life. Now I don't know much about vampires, but I've noticed you rarely eat, and you haven't aged a day in ten years. And you look different than you used to - more like the Cullens. Especially the eyes. But none of you have fangs and I know you don't spend your days sleeping in coffins..."

"Yes, Charlie, we're vampires," Edward told him, and Charlie's heartbeat increased its pace even further. "Not the kind you see in movies - we don't have fangs, and we don't sleep in coffins. Actually we don't sleep at all. We don't eat food, and we don't age. We have supernatural strength and speed. Most of the other folklore is just myth. I'm sure you have a lot more questions but I'm not sure how much more you want to know."

"You don't eat? I know I've seen you eat a _few_ times..."

"That was just for your benefit," I explained. "We didn't want to alarm you or have you think we had an eating disorder or anything, and we couldn't keep excusing ourselves from eating without giving you more information than you wanted at the time. We can swallow it, but we can't digest it. It, um, gets coughed back up later - sorry, that's disgusting. I'm sure you're wondering if we suck people's blood..."

"Actually, Bells, I'm not sure I want to hear about that part." He looked like he might be getting sick.

"I need to explain this - it's not as bad as it could be."

He waited silently, and didn't object a second time, so I continued. "Our family - all of the Cullens and Hales - are committed to abstaining from human blood. We hunt animals instead. I've never killed or hurt anyone. I'm still me, Dad. I'm still your little girl, just a lot more durable and a bit less clumsy. Nothing has changed in the last ten years - you just have a name now for what we are."

We waited silently for a couple minutes while Charlie processed the fact that we really are vampires. His heart rate slowly returned to a near-normal speed. I felt such relief - it didn't appear he was going to have a heart attack. Or throw up. Or run away screaming.

"You knew what you were getting into? This is what you wanted? To be a... a vampire?"

"Yes, Dad, I knew exactly what I was getting into. I've known what Edward was since a few days before I introduced him to you. He tried to talk me out becoming like him because he didn't want me to give up my humanity for him, but I knew I wanted to be with him forever, and I would have gotten old and eventually died while he remained a teenager. I am completely happy, Dad. Totally, blissfully happy. I'm much better at being a vampire than I was at being human. I always felt like I didn't fit in before, like my brain didn't work like everyone else's, but I've found my place now. My place is with Edward, wherever and however that may be."

"I know you're happy, Bella. I can see that. I guess that's really what matters most. This is just a lot to take in. How does that work, becoming a vampire? What did they do to you?"

"I don't think you want _all_ the details there, Charlie." Edward jumped in. "But I'll give you the basics. As Jacob already told you, she would have died if I hadn't changed her. To be honest with you, I had already agreed to do it anyway because it was what she wanted, it probably would just have been a few months later. What changed our schedule was her pregnancy with Renesmee - that was completely unexpected. She insisted on carrying the baby to term even though she knew there was a significant chance that neither of them would survive. We weren't lying when we told you she was severely ill with an extremely rare condition. By the time Nessie was delivered, Bella's spine was broken and she wasn't breathing. Bella was given CPR and my venom was injected from a syringe directly into her heart. She woke up two days later as one of us, with her spine and all of her other injuries healed."

Charlie's face went pale when he mentioned my broken spine and the venom injection.

"It is what I wanted, Dad." I reassured him. "If I had it all to do over again, I would still make the same choices."

"What about you?" Charlie asked Edward. "Who changed you? Why did you decide to become..." He was having still trouble with the word "vampire."

"I didn't have a choice like Bella did, but I was also at the point of death. Carlisle wouldn't have done it otherwise." Edward went on to tell his story about the Spanish Influenza and how his mother had asked Carlisle from her deathbed to save him. He explained briefly the circumstances under which Carlisle had changed Esme, Rosalie, and Emmett, and added that Jasper and Alice had joined the family later on but went into less detail about their histories.

"Dad," I began. "Now that you know what we are, it is _very_ important, for your safety and ours, that you not tell anyone. Not that anyone would be likely to believe you anyway, but there is one rule in our world, and that is that we not expose ourselves to humans. It's okay for the Quileutes to know, because of the whole wolf thing, but you can't say anything to anyone else."

"No worries, there, Bells. I would be committed if I talked about the things I've seen in the last ten years." He turned and looked at Sue and Seth. "You two have known about this all along?"

"I knew most of it," Sue admitted. "I knew they were vampires but I didn't know all of the history or some of the other details. I didn't like keeping it from you, but it wasn't my secret to share, and I didn't think you wanted to know."

"You're right, I didn't. I think I'm glad I know now though. At least I won't drive myself crazy thinking about what Billy said. You knew too, Seth?"

"Yeah, I know everything Jake knows. It's a wolf thing. We don't have any secrets amongst ourselves."

"So I've been the only one in the dark this whole time. Figures."

"Not exactly," I reminded him. "Remember, Renée doesn't know either. We gave her that story about us being top secret government agents."

Charlie laughed. "I'm not sure which story sounds crazier, that one or the real one!"

We all joined him in laughter. Only Renée...

"You're really okay with this, Charlie?" Edward asked. "Bella is right, she is the same person she was before you learned what we are, as am I. I hope this new information won't affect your relationship with our family."

"I'm okay. It's still sinking in though. But I definitely don't want to lose you guys. Bella will always be my baby girl. You're all right too, Edward. It's taken me a long time to admit it, but you've been good for Bella. Even if you've turned her into a... a vampire... it's apparently what she wanted and you've made her happy. And Nessie..." He looked confused. "Is she a vampire too?"

"She's half-human, half-vampire," I explained. "She sleeps at night, and she can digest regular food but prefers our diet. She matured quickly, as you know, but you may not be aware that she stopped aging a couple years ago."

"Can she and Jake have kids?"

Edward and I looked at one another. This was something we had wondered about as well.

Edward took a stab at answering. "We're not entirely sure. Carlisle and I have discussed it at length, and we both share the opinion is that the answer is 'no'. We've done extensive studies on their DNA, and it is remarkably similar, so from that perspective they seem compatible, but we suspect Renesmee's body is incapable of pregnancy. Since her birth, we have learned of four others like her in the world, one male and three females, none of whom have mates, but what we do know from those four is that once they reached maturity they stopped aging. So we speculate that her body would be unable to adapt to a pregnancy, the same as a female vampire who can't age or change. Then again, we were obviously wrong about Bella and me - we never dreamed it would be possible for me to father a child - so we're really not certain. As far as we know, marriage between a half-vampire and a werewolf is completely unprecedented. Nessie and Jake are a very unique couple."

We also knew Nessie and Jake have been taking precautions to avoid pregnancy, but Charlie didn't need that level of personal information. They weren't ready for kids yet at this point in their lives, and even if they were, the birth of a tri-racial part-human, part-vampire, part-wolf baby would definitely attract unwanted attention from the Volturi. And Charlie didn't need to know about them either.

"About you all not aging..."

"Yes?" I wondered where he was going with this, since I knew he was already aware we hadn't changed at all since high school.

"Well, does that mean you'll live longer? Since you won't get old?"

"Exactly." I smiled, knowing he would like this. "We can potentially live forever." I watched his eyes get larger. "That's our plan, anyway. The only way we can die is if we are killed by another vampire, or by a werewolf. And we've made friends with the werewolves, so we should be safe on that point."

"That's really something. I guess I don't really need to worry about your safety as much as I do." He paused briefly. "Well, we'd better get back to packing up these books if you kids are planning to leave tonight." Charlie resumed packing as if his distraction had been a good play by a sports team on TV, rather than a conversation about his daughter and her family being undead immortals and the reproductive ability of his half-vampire granddaughter and her werewolf husband.

He really seemed okay with this. Jacob had been right. Charlie was tougher than he looked. I smiled at Dad's use of the word "kids" in reference to Edward and me. He still didn't realize that Edward was old enough to be his great-grandfather.


	8. Catching Up

Chapter 8: Catching Up

We had finished packing a few boxes when Jake and Nessie arrived. Charlie put down his box and Nessie ran over to give him her usual hug. He looked just as pleased to see her as he always did. He was handling this exceptionally well.

I pulled Nessie and Jake aside and let them know Charlie was now in on the secret, but still didn't know all the details, like our special talents or the existence of the Volturi.

Jacob sat down in the love seat, appearing uninterested in packing, and Renesmee sat down next to him, her fingers entwined with his.

Seth handed Charlie and Sue a couple more boxes and then walked over to Edward and me and draped his arms across our shoulders. "Is there a reason you don't want him to know about your talent?" Seth asked Edward in a voice low enough that Charlie wouldn't hear.

"It might be too much for him, all in one day," I told him.

"I think he'd want to know," Seth said. "I would. I mean, it's never really bothered me that you can hear what I'm thinking, and I know you've said you can't read Charlie very well, but if I were married and someone was reading my wife's thoughts, I'd want to know."

"I've never really thought about it from that perspective," Edward admitted. "He probably deserves to know I'm overhearing everything."

"Let's ask Sue what she thinks," I suggested.

"Sue!" Edward called her name and she looked up. "Do you think Charlie would want to know about my talent? Would that be too much for one day?" So much for being discreet.

Sue and Charlie had a whispered conversation, and then Charlie said, "You might as well tell me. I don't think anything is going to shock me at this point."

A playful smile flashed across Edward's face. "How about I just stop hiding it and we'll see how long it takes you to figure it out?" I was a bit surprised Edward would want to make a game out of it - Charlie must be handling this even better than I thought. Edward wouldn't have this carefree attitude if Charlie's thoughts weren't perfectly calm. I had to admit, it would be nice to be able to be ourselves around him. We were now getting very close to being able to entirely drop the human charade in front of my dad.

"Okay." Charlie shrugged, his brow furrowing a bit. "I'm not sure what I'm looking for though."

"It's nothing too scary," I assured him. "Just pay attention to the things Edward says today, and see if you pick up on anything unusual about him. This is something unique to Edward. He has a special skill that none of the rest of us have."

"All right..."

I moved my shield aside to ask, _"Edward, do you want me to keep my shield on Jake and Nessie?"_ I wasn't sure if he might want to hear everyone to make it a little easier to drop hints for Charlie.

He looked up at me suddenly in reaction to hearing me think his name, but Charlie didn't notice. Edward nodded once, just slightly. I hadn't been bothering to shield the others in the first place, so I just left my shield as it was.

I added some more DVDs to my box, then turned to Jake and asked, "How is Billy today?"

"He's doing much better than yesterday. In fact, he's supposed to be discharged later today. Rachel and Paul got there just as we were leaving. They're going to be taking him home and he'll be living with them for a while, maybe permanently. He's been having so many problems lately with his health, we don't feel comfortable with him living on his own right now."

"I'm glad Rachel and Paul are here for him. He'll definitely be in good hands while you're away at school." I closed up my box and Seth passed me another.

"Yeah, Rachel and Paul are great. Ya know, I was starting to worry I wouldn't be able to leave tomorrow, with Dad being in the hospital and all. It's a relief that he's doing so much better, but I'm still a little worried I might need to come back before the semester's over. I've told him I can wait and do the college thing later on, but he really seems to want me to go ahead and do this. I think he's kind of proud that I somehow got in to such a good school. I guess I can't let him down, huh?"

"Jacob," Edward began. "Billy is very proud of you, and not just for getting into Dartmouth. I get the impression he doesn't talk about these things much, but he's also proud of how you've handled your responsibilities as an Alpha wolf, of how you've overcome prejudice - and helped him overcome his own prejudice - to form an alliance with us. He's proud to have Nessie as a daughter-in-law, and he's proud to have you as a son. He really does want you to go on to school, and he would blame himself if you passed up this opportunity."

"He's right, Jacob," Charlie added, briefly casting a slightly perplexed glance Edward's way. "He brags about you all the time when we're out fishing. He was so excited when you got that acceptance letter. He'll be fine with Rachel looking after him. He wants you to go, and he wants you to enjoy yourself." He stooped down to get an armload of books off the bottom shelf.

"Thanks, guys."

"Are you going to help out, Jake?" Charlie hinted. "We've still got a lot left to pack over here."

"Well, I've been wondering why they have you doing all that work if they've told you about all the vampire stuff." He looked over to Edward and me. "He knows about vampire speed, right?"

"We did mention that, briefly," Edward told him, "but I wasn't sure he was ready for a demonstration."

"Charlie, they could have this whole room packed up in a matter of seconds. There's no need for you to be straining your back like that." Jake leaned over and patted the empty sofa. "Come sit down and let them show you how fast they are."

Charlie, looking a bit tired, walked slowly over to the sofa and sat down. Sue followed, sitting down next to him and taking his hand in hers.

Edward looked Charlie in the eye. "You're sure you want to see this, Charlie? We'll be dropping all pretense of normalcy here."

"Things haven't been 'normal' around here in a long time, Edward. Go ahead, I'm curious. You can't possibly be as fast as Jake said. You can finish this in less than a minute?"

Edward and I looked at each other, exchanging a grin at the challenge, then tackled the job at vampire speed. It took us 18 seconds to have the shelves emptied, with the boxes full of books and DVDs taped shut and stacked neatly near the front door.

Charlie whistled. "Wow. Impressive. You could have just told us you didn't need our help."

"It would have been rude to refuse your offer, Dad. But we did want you to come over - we enjoy your company. It may be a few weeks before we see each other again. We did finish all the other rooms last night to make sure you wouldn't need to help with those." The other rooms had taken us longer, even at vampire speed, because we were having to decide what to take with us and what to leave here, plus some items had triggered memories, which had in turn triggered conversations which sidetracked us and somehow caused the task to take up the entire night.

Seth sat back down on the other side of Sue, and Edward and I settled into the remaining armchair. I initially sat down on the arm of the chair, then slid down so that I was sort of halfway sitting in Edward's lap, with his arm around me. The seven of us spent the next couple hours just sitting around talking and laughing together.

We told about our adventures on our recent trip to Brazil, focusing on the sightseeing portions, of course. Jake and Nessie talked about their day climbing Sugar Loaf and how amazing the sunset was from up there. I was glad they had waited for a sunny day and gone there on their own. Rio really was a beautiful city, and Isle Esme was simply gorgeous. We passed around some pictures we had taken while there. Sue seemed captivated by them, and I told Dad he should take her there someday. Maybe Edward and I could send them there as a gift sometime, maybe for their tenth anniversary

Sue filled us in on the long-overdue renovations they were making to their kitchen - Sue had moved into in Charlie's house in Forks when they got married. They had painted the kitchen, as well as the rest of the house, shortly before their wedding a little over eight years ago, so Renée's bright yellow was long gone, but they been saving up the last few years for some more extensive updates. They had painted again, put down a hardwood floor, and were getting new appliances and a new table with matching chairs. I was sure it would look like a different house when they were finished. That was not a bad thing though - that kitchen had desperately needed to be updated, and I was glad Sue was putting her own touches on the house.

Seth talked some about his veterinary practice he had recently opened in Port Angeles. He also had an office in La Push. I thought it was wonderful that he had chosen that occupation. Edward had told me that he became interested in that field because he wanted to be able to help his pack brothers if they were ever injured again. Of course, it seemed unlikely that any of them would be injured severely enough to require his services, barring another vampire army invasion, but Seth would be able to help if his services were ever needed. I was glad, especially considering that Carlisle was currently living on the opposite side of the country, and the pack members couldn't go to a regular hospital or veterinary clinic due to their unique physiology which would raise too many questions. Seth had focused his studies on wolves, of course, and was quickly becoming one of the nation's most respected authorities on veterinary treatment of wolves. He had done some traveling to various zoos and nature sanctuaries when his knowledge and expertise were needed, so he shared some stories with us about those trips.

The conversation then turned to our moving plans. We explained that we would be leaving tonight to drive straight to Chicago so we could visit Edward's boyhood home. We would spend a night there, and continue on to Hanover. The moving company would pick up our boxes from our front porch in La Push tomorrow morning.

"Are you going to be living on campus?" Charlie asked. "You said you have everything packed now - it seems there's a lot you're not taking with you."

"No, we won't be living on campus - we have a house there," Edward told him. "I bought it when we were first engaged, because I had hoped to talk Bella into attending Dartmouth that fall."

Charlie raised his eyebrows when Edward mentioned the purchase of the house. Our limitless funds never ceased to amaze him. "Well, that's good that you've already got a place there..."

"And we're not taking everything with us because we're not selling this house yet," Edward continued. "We're keeping it so we can stay here whenever we come back to visit."

"You know you're always welcome to stay with Sue and me. No need to maintain two mortgages."

Edward smiled. "I've never had a mortgage. We own both houses outright."

"When you first told me you were getting married, I worried about how you two would manage financially, being so young." Charlie chuckled. "It appears you had the situation under control much more than I realized. I had always assumed the Cullen money was Carlisle's."

"What I told you before was true - I inherited a sizable amount from my biological parents - my human parents, and I've invested wisely over the years. Carlisle has his own money; he always insisted I keep mine separate, since it was from my inheritance."

Charlie looked at Jake. "Do you and Nessie have a house too?"

Jake snorted. "No, Mr. Moneybags here offered to buy us one, but Nessie and I want to make it on our own. We're gonna live with Edward and Bella for a few months until we find jobs, and then we're planning to get our own apartment."

"You're a good boy, Jake." Charlie looked impressed. "I'm sure Billy is proud of you for that too." He turned to me. "So is your house already furnished? You're not taking any furniture with you?"

"Alice and Esme are selecting the furnishings this week. I'm sure they're there right now, arranging things in the house. You know how Alice loves decorating. They'll still be there when the movers arrive, so they can let the movers in. Knowing Alice, she may even have everything unpacked for us by the time we get there."

"I think you said earlier you're driving all the way there?" Charlie asked. "I've never driven cross-country but I'm sure that will be a long trip. So are you taking all 4 cars? You're all driving separately?"

"I'm leaving the Rabbit here," Jake told him. "It hasn't really had much appeal after Edward sort of permanently loaned us the old Aston Martin." He grinned. "Nessie and I will take turns driving."

"You better be keeping to the speed limit, Jake," Charlie warned.

"Sure, sure."

Sort of permanently loaned? I thought we had given it to them, but they must have refused to let Edward sign over the title. I guess that explains why they never considered selling it so they could rent their own apartment in Hanover. I had kind of wondered about that, but hadn't wanted to bring it up in case it might make them feel like we didn't want them living with us.

This seemed as good a time as any to bring up the subject of the Volvo with Charlie. "Dad? Talking about the cars reminded me that we have a favor to ask of you."

"Anything Bella. What do you need?"

"I was wondering if you could take care of the Volvo for us while we're gone. We'll be driving my car for the trip, and Edward's getting a new car after we move. We don't need the Volvo any more, but we hate to sell it because we have so many memories with that car. You'll be needing a car soon when you retire, so we thought that might work out well."

"Well, you can leave it at my house if you want, and I can keep an eye on it for you. I won't drive it though - I'd be too afraid something might happen to it."

"No, Charlie," Edward explained. "What she meant is we would like to transfer the car to you. We don't need it anymore, and we'd much rather see you get some use out of it rather than selling it to a stranger."

"You want to give me your car?" He looked surprised. "I can't accept that - it's too much. That's an expensive car there, Edward."

"Charlie, it's twelve years old. It's not worth that much anymore, and I've gotten considerably more use out of it than I originally anticipated. I usually don't keep a car more than four or five years. I've only kept this one so long because Bella wanted me to." He leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, "She agreed I could get a new car if you would take this one. Can you help me out here, please?"

"Okay, okay. I'll take the car." He laughed. "Only you guys could make it sound like I'm doing you a favor instead of the other way around. I'll try to take good care of it. I'll even clean out the garage so I won't have to park it in the rain."

"Thanks, Dad!" I gave him a big - but gentle - hug.

Edward tossed him the keys. "The paperwork's already been taken care of," he admitted with a grin. "And trust me, you are doing me a HUGE favor." We all laughed again. Charlie passed the keys on to Sue, since he would need to drive the cruiser home himself.

"Wait a minute." Charlie looked over at Edward. "You say you usually keep a car four or five years? How many cars have you had before the Volvo?"

"Twenty-three." Edward answered without pausing to think.

Charlie just stared at him as the implication of Edward's true age began to sink in.

"Go ahead and ask if you want to know," Edward suggested.

"How old are you?"

"I'm seventeen - and I've been seventeen for ninety-eight years."

Charlie's eyes widened, and he thought about it a minute before replying. "I guess that's what Bella meant when she kept telling me you were old-fashioned."

Edward smiled. "Yes sir, Chief Swan. My mother raised me to be a gentleman."

"You did always have an old-fashioned sort of politeness about you. I always thought you were just trying to get on my good side."

"Oh, I was. It never seemed to help much though." We all laughed.

"So..." Charlie began when the laughter died down, "What will you guys be studying in school?"

"I'm starting out undeclared," I told him. "I'm going to take classes in some different subjects and see what I like. Really I'm going more for the experience of going to college than anything else, and I thought it would be fun to be in college at the same time as Nessie."

"I'm going for a business degree," Jacob told him. "My shop here in La Push has been doing pretty well, but I'd like to get the skills to do something a little more large scale."

"I haven't really decided yet," Renesmee smiled, "but I've signed up for the same classes as Jake. Who knows, maybe I'll like business too."

"What about you, Edward? What are you interested in?"

"I'm enrolled in medical school."

"Again?" Jake exclaimed. "Haven't you been twice already?"

Charlie looked confused. "How do you go straight from high school to medical school? Why would you go to medical school multiple times? And why were you in high school with Bella if you had already been to medical school?"

Edward tackled all of the questions in order they were asked. "I'm not exactly going straight from high school - I've been to college several times and have a few undergraduate degrees already. The reason for going to medical school multiple times is because the field of medicine changes rapidly and Carlisle likes to keep up with the latest updates. Rosalie and I go instead of him so he doesn't have to take time away from his practice - he can't be a practicing doctor at the same time he's posing as a med school student. I take the classes and relay any new information to him. I'll be specializing in oncology this time - it's Carlisle's latest interest. He's doing research in that field at Harvard right now. The reason I was in high school with Bella was because the younger we pretend to be, the longer we can live in one place. Our family really likes Forks - it was our second time here - so we started out as freshmen so Carlisle could stay at the hospital as long as possible before people started noticing he wasn't aging. We've all been to high school a number of times. It's incredibly monotonous, but seven hours a day isn't much to sacrifice when you don't sleep - we still had seventeen hours a day to do whatever else interested us."

"So you're just going to school for Carlisle? What about what you want?" Charlie still seemed confused.

"Oh, I already have what I want." Edward looked over at me meaningfully.

"But you don't intend to become a doctor like Carlisle? It doesn't really interest you?" Charlie persisted.

"It does interest me. I find medicine more fascinating than any of the other subjects I've studied. I enjoy discussing theories and the latest advances with Carlisle, but I'm not sure I will ever be able to practice - I don't trust myself enough yet. Carlisle's ability to ignore human blood from an open wound is extremely unusual for our kind, and it took him many years to develop the tolerance to become a surgeon."

"I thought you said you fed from animals." Charlie was still confused.

"We do, and it allows us to live among humans, but resisting human blood is not without effort. This is probably a poor comparison, but imagine Sue talked you into becoming a vegetarian, and served you nothing but salad and lentils, and then someone set a big juicy steak in front of you. You could probably resist, if you really wanted to, but your mouth would be watering, and you would be tempted. Our diet never fully satisfies our thirst, but we resist because it is important to us that we not harm humans. But if the blood is flowing from an open wound, the scent is much stronger, and it becomes more difficult to maintain control."

"So if Sue or I had some sort of accident at your house and blood was flowing..."

"There's always some risk," Edward answered honestly, "You would be in more danger than Sue; she has enough wolf in her blood that she doesn't smell very appetizing to us. But what would most likely happen if you got so much as a paper cut is that we would all hold our breath and leave the house, and if Jacob or Seth were here, they would phase and position themselves between us to protect you. If I knew I was under control I would probably stay and help bandage you up. My tolerance has improved tremendously since I met Bella, just not to the point where I would intentionally place myself in a situation to be around the free flowing blood of strangers on a daily basis."

"I don't want you to be scared, Dad," I told him. "None of us would ever want to hurt you. Edward has more control than he realizes - probably as much as Carlisle. I've seen Edward in situations with blood several times and he's never lost control. He would never hurt you, and he would have enough control to stop anyone else who might try."

"I trust you, Bella. You wouldn't have let me visit all these years if it wasn't safe." He grinned. "I'll just have to make sure not to cut myself." I wasn't sure he took it as seriously as he should, but then that is probably how Edward always felt about my reactions. Just as I had cared too much about Edward to be concerned with the risks of associating with vampires, Dad cared too much about Nessie and me to be concerned with the risks to himself.

Edward's phone rang just then. I glanced at the number as he was about to answer it - Mishna. I watched Dad's expression as he realized Edward was speaking in a foreign language. Everyone stopped talking until the short phone call ended.

"Was that Spanish? I didn't know you were bilingual." Charlie looked more surprised about this than he had about all the vampire information.

"Portuguese, actually," Edward told him. "I'm fluent in several languages. I always make sure I know the language whenever I'm visiting another country. Bella and Renesmee also learned Portuguese for our trip to Brazil."

"So you understood all of that, Nessie?"

"Yes, that was Mishna. She's half-human like me. She and her siblings live in Brazil and we visited them while we were down there. Mom and Dad bought them mobile phones so they can keep in touch with us more easily. She was just trying out her new phone."

"How long have you been studying Portuguese?"

"We started about a week before we left on the trip."

"A week? How did you learn it so fast?" He was beaming with pride at his granddaughter.

"Well, the first day we read a dictionary and a textbook that listed the rules for grammar, and then the rest of the week we practiced a little with Dad." She shrugged her shoulders, not realizing how much she had just impressed her grandfather.

"Oh." Charlie had always known she was unnaturally advanced for her age, yet her abilities always seemed to surprise him.


	9. Charlie and Billy

Chapter 9: Charlie and Billy

I looked at the clock and realized it was time to put the casseroles in the oven. I started to excuse myself to get things going in the kitchen but Seth insisted he would take care of it, and Edward whispered to me that I should let him, so I gave him brief instructions and he happily took off to the kitchen. I suddenly realized Seth probably felt a little out of place in the room full of couples. It didn't seem fair - Seth had to be one of the nicest guys who ever lived, and he was the only one of the wolves who hadn't imprinted yet.

"Paul and Rachel are almost here," Edward announced with a big smile. "I didn't think they were going to be able to come. Billy is with them too." He turned to look at Charlie, whose face was rather expressionless. "Is something wrong, Charlie?"

"You and Dad aren't still mad at each other, are you?" Jacob asked Charlie.

"Not mad exactly," Charlie stated awkwardly, giving Edward a funny look. "It was nothing really. I was going to apologize when I went to visit him in the hospital yesterday but he wasn't alert enough to understand. I don't think he even knew I was there."

"Well, you can apologize tonight," Sue told him. "This stress isn't good for his health, and it's not good for yours either. You need to just let it go."

Edward opened the door for Paul, Rachel, and Billy before they could knock. Paul carried Billy in his wheelchair effortlessly up the steps to our door, while Jacob grabbed some chairs from another room for Paul and Rachel.

"Billy, I'd like to apologize for getting angry with you last weekend. I overreacted and I want us to stay friends." Charlie looked awkward but sincere. He had probably been rehearsing those words for a day or two. I knew apologizing in front of an audience must be hard for him - he has always been a private person, like me.

"Well, I still don't know what that was all about," Billy grumbled, "but I guess I accept your apology. I just wish you would tell me what's wrong when something's bothering you, because I can't read your mind."

I could tell Charlie's blood pressure was going up, and he seemed to be struggling not to reply with something that would negate his apology.

"This is ridiculous, you two," Edward interceded. "Neither of you even understands why the other is upset. Billy, Charlie's feelings were hurt because he thinks you sold your extra fishing boat to Ronnie Johnson after you promised him first dibs on it if you ever sold it. He thinks you must have been mad at him about something else to have done that. Charlie, Billy was just upset that you yelled at him last weekend and accused him of breaking promises when he didn't think he had done anything. He honestly forgot that you had expressed an interest in buying the boat and I don't think he ever realized you were serious about your offer. And he didn't sell it to Ronnie, he gave it to him to replace Ronnie's boat that a couple of wolves named Jake and Paul broke during a wrestling match."

Jacob and Paul looked at each other, confused.

Billy glared at Edward before addressing Charlie. "He's right. I forgot you'd told me you were interested in that boat. I'm sorry my memory is so bad. I wasn't really interested in selling it anyway. It just seemed like the best way to take care of the problem with Ronnie because I couldn't afford to pay for the repairs to his boat."

"Dad, that's not your responsibility anyway," Jacob argued. "You're not the one who caused the damage. I wish you had just told me we broke his boat. I could have paid for the repairs. I'll still pay you back. I'm sorry, Charlie, this was apparently all my fault."

"And mine," added Paul. "I'll pay you back for my share, Billy. I appreciate your intentions but you're not responsible for our recklessness. We need to pay more attention to our surroundings when we're wrestling. I didn't even notice we broke anything."

"No," Billy protested, "I've already taken care of it. Jake, you need your money for school, and Paul, you need to take care of that new little one that's on the way. And it _was_ my fault, since I was the one who invited a pack of werewolves over to his place, and it was my own son and son-in-law who crashed into his boat."

Jake and Paul just shook their heads. They would be paying him back.

"I'm really sorry, Billy," Charlie apologized again, more earnestly this time. "I shouldn't have assumed... I understand about the boat. Sorry I yelled at you."

"Don't worry about it," Billy smiled. "I'm glad we got that worked out." He glared at Edward again. "Although Jake and Paul really didn't need to know about it."

Charlie looked at Edward, his eyes narrowed. "How did you know about all of this anyway? Were you there when Ronnie's boat was damaged?"

Edward shook his head. "I have a special talent, remember?" he teased. "Are you ready to guess yet?"

Charlie's eyes widened. "Don't tell me you're... what's that word... omniscient?"

We all laughed, Jacob louder than the rest of us,

"He wishes!" Jacob exclaimed when he finally caught his breath between howls of laughter.

"No, Charlie," Edward smirked. "I'm a vampire, not a god."

"No, _you_ did," Edward turned to Billy in response to his silent question "You were apparently a little overmedicated yesterday when Charlie visited you," He paused for Billy's next question. "Nearly everything but the talents. We're letting him figure those out on his own. And we left out a few other details for now." Another pause. "Exactly." Another pause. "Remarkably well. We were worried about how it might affect his blood pressure but he's been fine."

The light bulb finally went on in Charlie's mind. "You're answering his thoughts? Your talent is mind-reading?" He was incredulous.

"I knew it wouldn't take you long," Edward told him. "Don't worry, I've never been able to hear you very well. I can't hear Bella at all, at least not unless she wants me to, and she seems to have inherited that mental block from you. I get a sense of what you're thinking about but none of the details. For example, a minute ago, I could sense that you were still upset with Billy the first time you apologized, but I wouldn't have known why if Sue hadn't been thinking about the reasons behind what was bothering you. When I told Billy why you were upset, his mind immediately reviewed what had actually happened with the boat, which I was then able to explain to you."

"That explains a lot," Charlie pondered. "Like how you always seem to know the right thing to say. And you've always known the perfect gifts for everyone. And how I never caught the two of you making out when I came home from work and walked in on you when you were dating - you could hear me coming, couldn't you?" Edward and I grinned guiltily. "And how you were able to give me such good advice when Sue and I were first getting together. You were reading our minds at that Valentine's party, weren't you?"

"Most of the time my talent is annoying, both to myself and to those who know I'm hearing them, but it does have its benefits at times," Edward told him. "I wonder how long it would have taken you two to get together if we hadn't intervened after that party."

"Probably a long time," Sue said, jabbing Charlie gently with her elbow.

I thought back to the time nearly ten years ago when I first began realizing Dad was interested in Sue.

It had been so obvious to everyone but Charlie that Sue returned his interest, but there had also been the conflict with Billy. Billy had fallen for Sue shortly after Harry died, and had begun to assume that they would eventually be a couple - it would have seemed the natural course of events for the two members of the tribal council who had both lost their spouses, who both had children who were members of the pack, to end up together. They did have a lot in common.

But Billy had invited Charlie along on their first few "dates", because he was afraid Sue might not be ready for people to see her dating so soon after her husband's death and wasn't sure she would want to consider them to be "dates" anyway, and Charlie had visited Sue some on his own, initially just to check on her out of respect for Harry, who had been one of his closest friends.

Over the course of a few months, Charlie and Sue had been spending more and more time together, and the friendship between Charlie and Billy had become more and more strained.

Alice had decided to throw a big party for Valentine's Day. Charlie had been invited because he was my dad, and Billy had been invited because he was Jacob's dad, and both of them had asked Sue to accompany them as their date. Sue was worried about hurting Billy's feelings and had suggested that the three of them go together.

They ended up all sitting in the Cullens' living room with Sue between Billy and Charlie. She had managed to sit slightly closer to Charlie, but Billy kept his arm around the back of the sofa, not quite touching her, but giving the appearance he thought they were together. The awkwardness was obvious to all of us. Jasper was there too of course, and after an hour of being bombarded by love, lust, worry, jealousy, and nervousness, he pulled Edward aside and told him he had to do something.

Edward got Jacob, Seth, Leah, and me together in another room and we developed a plot to get the two lovebirds together faster while trying to minimize the damage to Billy. Edward explained he could tell from Sue's thoughts that she was interested in Charlie but wasn't sure he was really interested in her that way, that she was worried about what her kids would think about her getting involved in a relationship when it had been not quite a year since Harry had died, and that she cared deeply about Billy as a friend and was worried about hurting him.

_"That last part sounds familiar," Jacob had told us. "I'll talk to Dad about letting go. It's going to be harder on him the longer this keeps up."_

Seth and Leah said they would both talk to Sue and let her know they could see she was interested in Charlie and that they were fine with it and wanted her to be happy.

Edward had suggested I talk to Charlie to encourage him to let Sue know how he felt, but I convinced him that Charlie would feel awkward discussing such things with me and that it would go over better if Edward would have a little talk with him, man to man. Charlie hadn't dated anyone since Renée, and I suspected his flirting skills were rather rusty.

The next night, we went to Charlie's for a visit. After supper, when Charlie headed to the living room to watch the game, Edward followed him in there, while Jacob and I stayed in the kitchen to wash the dishes, and Nessie of course stayed with Jacob. This provided Charlie the illusion of a private conversation with Edward, even though all three of us could hear every word from the kitchen. Edward had waited for a commercial break so he could be sure to get Charlie's undivided attention.

_"Charlie, several of us were noticing yesterday at the party that things seemed kind of awkward with you, Billy, and Sue. You're both interested in her, aren't you?"_

_"Umm... well, yes, it seems that way. When I'm alone with her, I sometimes think she might return my interest, but then she keeps inviting Billy along. Or maybe Billy is inviting himself. I'm really not sure."_

_"I think it's obvious, Charlie, that you're the one she is interested in. Even Jasper said something to me about it last night, the way she kept looking at you and trying to sit closer to you. She's just too polite to say anything to Billy and hurt his feelings."_

_"Well, maybe."_

_"Have you told her how you feel?"_

_"No... I'm not sure how, or if she would want to hear it. We've spent a lot of time together though, just talking. We started out talking mostly about Harry, but I've gotten to know Sue pretty well over the past few months, and I've come to care about her a great deal. I never thought I would feel this way about anyone else after Ren__é__e."_

_"You've got to tell her, Charlie. Trust me, I can tell she wants to hear it, from the way she was looking at you last night."_

_"I'm not really sure what to say. I've never been good at putting my feelings into words."_

_"Tell her what you just told me. I think that says it perfectly."_

_"I don't know. I'm not sure I can. I'm really not good with talking about feelings. I'd get it all messed up if I tried to talk to her about that."_

_"Well, show her then. Hold her hand, rub her arm. I take it you haven't kissed her yet?"_

_"Um, well, no, Edward, but I'm not sure I'm really comfortable talking about this with you. It's really none of your business."_

_"I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean to pry, but Bella and I would both love to see the two of you get together. We think you'd make a great couple. Seriously, sir, you should kiss her goodnight the next time you go out. Assuming Billy's not with you of course. Believe me, I know how hard it is to get up the courage for that first kiss. Not that I'm an expert in this area, since Bella is the only girl I've ever kissed, but I do remember how nervous I was that first time. You can't possibly be as nervous as I was - at least for you it won't be your first kiss ever."_

_Charlie laughed. "It's hard for me to imagine you being nervous. You have to be one of the most self-confident young men I've ever met. And it's difficult for me to believe that you never kissed a girl before Bella. I'm sure you could have dated any girl in that school, with your good looks."_

_Edward chuckled. "Well, thank you sir. But I wasn't interested in any of the other girls in school. No girl has ever held the power over me that Bella does. I'll admit I'm pretty confident most of the time, but I wasn't with Bella. I was always afraid she would change her mind about me, right up until she finally married me. About you and Sue though - try holding her hand on your next date, and if the hand-holding goes well, try the goodnight kiss. I can tell she is interested in you. She's just waiting for you to make the first move."_

_"There's still Billy to consider, too. I'd really hate to lose his friendship after all these years. Even if Sue does return my interest, I'm afraid Billy will see it as me stealing his girl."_

_"That may be, but Jacob is planning to talk to him. It was obvious to all of us last night, including Jacob, that Sue prefers you. Jacob is afraid Billy will be more hurt the longer this goes on. He doesn't want Billy to go through what he did when Bella chose me."_

_"You know, it still amazes me how well you two get along now. You used to look at each other like you wanted to kill one another, and now you're good pals."_

_"Yes, it's funny how things worked out. Once Bella and I were married and he accepted the competition was over, he turned out to be a pretty decent guy. I'm really glad to have him as a friend now. I think things can work out with you and Billy, too. It may not go well initially, but time tends to heal these sorts of things."_

_"Thank you, Edward. I'll give what you said some thought."_

I snapped out of my memories and Sue was still talking about when she and Charlie first got together. "I had been hoping he would do something romantic for Valentine's day, but even after we dropped Billy off at his house and were alone, he didn't say anything. Still no goodnight kiss, nothing. The next night, Seth and Leah were both telling me how great they thought Charlie was and what a great couple we would make, and I had convinced myself that he didn't feel that way about me. Then that weekend we went out to see a movie, and suddenly he was holding my hand and putting his arm around me in the theater, and when we got home he kissed me before I got out of the car. Edward, whatever you said to him in your little pep talk, it was quite effective!"

"I know," Edward grimaced. "You were thinking about it the next time you two came over to visit Nessie. I could have done without the visuals of the kiss, but I was happy for you."

"I'm sorry I made things awkward there for you in the beginning," Billy told them. "I could see pretty early on that you were falling in love with Charlie. I should have backed off earlier, it would have been easier on all of us."

"I really missed you those two years when we weren't speaking to each other," Charlie told him. "I'm glad we're able to be friends again."

Seth came back in from the kitchen. "Casseroles are in the oven, first batch of steaks are on the grill."

"Thanks, Seth, I'll take over from here. The rest of the pack should be here in a few minutes." Edward headed out back to tend to the steaks.

"So how is Leah doing? Have you heard from her lately?" I asked Seth as he sat back down next to Sue.

"Yeah, I talked to her yesterday actually. This should be her last year of school to finish up her psychiatry degree. Cody's going to stay home with baby Sophie so she can concentrate on school. She should be able to start her own practice next year and she'll be making enough money that he can continue to be a stay-at-home dad. They seem happy."

Leah had stopped phasing when she went away to college. She never really liked being a wolf and never really felt like she fit in with the guys. We didn't see her often, as she still didn't like being around vampires, even if she had one as a stepsister now. She was cool with Charlie being her step-dad but she avoided me and the rest of the Cullens as much as possible. She had started aging again after she hadn't phased for a while, and I was so happy for her when she married Cody and when she found out she was pregnant with Sophie. Edward had told me how she worried the wolf thing had made her menopausal, but once her body started aging again, her normal cycle had returned. I was so glad she was over Sam and able to enjoy life now.

The rest of the pack began to arrive and we moved out to the backyard where there was more space. I set out the salads, casseroles, and desserts and fixed a few more side dishes while Edward finished up the steaks. Then we happily served everyone without having to make excuses to avoid eating anything ourselves.

It was so nice not to pretend we were eating that foul-smelling human food.

It was a loud group - fortunately our house was away from town, nestled in the edge of the forest, so there were no neighbors near enough to complain.

After everyone had been served, Edward whispered to me that he thought Charlie had some questions and was wanting to talk to me alone. So when I heard Sue excuse herself to go to the bathroom, I went over and sat down by him.

"Edward said you wanted to talk to me alone?"

He looked a bit startled and confused. "I thought he couldn't read my exact thoughts?"

"Right. He just gets a vague sense of what you're thinking, He didn't know what you wanted to talk about, just that you wanted me alone and that you had questions."

"Oh. Well, it was nothing really important, but I was just wondering... About Renesmee..."

"What is it, Dad?"

"It's just that I've always wondered... You didn't look the least bit pregnant at your wedding, but she looked about three months old when I first saw her just a few weeks after that..." He lowered his voice even more, unaware that everyone but Sue could still hear anyway. "Were you already pregnant when you told me you were engaged?"

"No, Dad. Definitely not. I wasn't pregnant at the wedding either. There's absolutely no way I could have been. Edward is old-fashioned, remember? She was conceived during our honeymoon. I didn't realize I was pregnant until I already had a bump showing. It was all very accelerated - my pregnancy went by at a rate of about one day for every two weeks of a normal human pregnancy. She was born just ten days after I realized I was expecting."

"Well, I'm sure glad everything worked out okay. I'm sure that was scary for you."

"Thanks, Dad." I smiled, amazed that he had just referred to my being turned into a vampire as "everything worked out okay." Sue came back just then, and the conversation turned back to other things.

Charlie and Sue left not long after they were finished eating, and Rachel took Billy home so he could get some rest.

Edward and I left not long after that, headed to Chicago in my Ferrari. Jake and Nessie could entertain his "brothers" however late they wanted, but we needed to get started on our trip to take as much advantage of the darkness as we could. Once we got far enough from the house that Charlie wouldn't see or hear, I turned off the headlights and hit the accelerator.


	10. Chicago

Chapter 10: Chicago 

**(EPOV)**

I looked over at Bella as I pulled back onto the interstate. My gorgeous wife was gazing into my eyes, smiling back at me. It was times like these I didn't need to ask what she was thinking - I could see the love in her eyes, and in her smile.

"I love you." The words fell from my lips automatically but this was no reflection on how fervently I felt the emotion behind them.

"I love you too." She reached for my hand. Those words still thrilled me to the very core of my being every time she spoke them. She loved _me_. She had chosen _me_. I took her hand in mine, her soft, smooth touch sending ripples of pleasure throughout my body.

I returned my eyes to the road, aware of her touch, aware that she was still staring at me. Lovingly. Longingly. Lustfully. Very distracting. I forced myself to keep my eyes on the road in front of me as I effortlessly navigated the obstacle course that was the interstate, speeding past other motorists as if they were not even moving.

It did not cease to amaze me that somehow Bella found me to be as pleasant and fascinating and desirable as I found her. That she loved me as much as I loved her. That she was truly mine.

I was in an extremely good mood. I had been in a nearly perpetual good mood for the last ten years, aside from that little "visit" from the Volturi, and even that had ended far better than we had any right to expect. Yes, I truly had everything I ever wanted, even the things I didn't even know to ask for.

We were about to turn a new page in our lives, with our family starting over in Hanover. It would be Bella's first time fully immersing herself in the human charade, with no need to stay out of sight of the public, and with a public who couldn't know our secret like the Quileutes did. I had no doubt my love would do fine. Everything about her new existence seemed to come naturally to her, and I knew this would be no different.

It would be nice to be closer to Carlisle and Esme again, and Alice and Jasper, and Emmett and Rosalie. I missed having our whole family together. We had visited a few times over the past two years but it was a big change after having lived together for so many decades. Emmett and Rosalie had spent time off on their own before, as had Alice and Jasper, but this had been my first time living away from Carlisle and Esme - at least, it had been my first time under pleasant circumstances. My rebellious period and my time spent tracking Victoria I definitely would not characterize as pleasant. I missed my family, and although we still wouldn't be living together, we would be close enough to visit any time we wanted, and I expected we would see some or all of them nearly every week now.

We were making good time on our way to Chicago. Bella's Ferrari handled well, and could do nearly 200 mph with the enhancements Rosalie had made. If not for the stops to refuel we probably could have made it to the outskirts of the city in just over eleven hours. In any case, I enjoyed driving. I enjoyed the speed and the control. I enjoyed having Bella sitting here next to me. Surprisingly, I had also been enjoying Bella's turns driving - we had been switching each time we refueled. I enjoyed that she also now found the speed thrilling, and I loved that she finally appreciated her car. And I loved that I could just sit and stare at her while she was driving, as she was now doing to me.

I was excited about seeing my human home again. It always felt good to go "home" even though there was, of course, no one there. More than anything though, this time, I was looking forward to Bella's reaction at visiting the house for the first time. I sincerely hoped those old photographs were still in Mother's closet, because I wanted to see Bella's eyes light up in excitement at seeing them. I was a bit nervous as to what my own reaction might be to seeing my parents again, if only in photographs, but my own feelings were secondary. I would not deny Bella this simple pleasure. I would not deny her anything. I squeezed her hand gently and smiled at her again.

I wondered what pictures we might find of me. I didn't even remember what I looked like as a human, except for the memories I had seen in Carlisle's mind of the time I spent in the hospital. I hoped the photographs did not show a boy as thin, frail, and sickly as the one Carlisle remembered. There was also the painting of my family I'd gotten a glimpse of as a newborn. I was probably about ten or eleven in that picture. I was an average-looking kid, and the painting was done before I hit the inevitably awkward early teenage years, so it shouldn't be too embarrassing for Bella to see, and it was a nice picture of my parents. Perhaps she might even want to take it with us and display it somewhere in our new home.

I thought about the phone call I had received from Alice the day before yesterday. She had been at our house in Hanover working on getting the furnishings in place, and had traveled around town a bit doing some shopping and checking out the area when she had come across the scent of another vampire somewhere near campus. It was no one she recognized, and she hadn't had any visions of us encountering other vampires at school, but it was not all that unusual that one of our kind would be found at one of the Ivy League schools.

Most likely it was just someone furthering their education to help alleviate the boredom that typically accompanies our existence, or it could have even been a nomad just passing through the area. If we were going to encounter any trouble at Dartmouth surely Alice would have had a vision about it by now.

I hadn't said anything to Bella about the phone call, as I didn't want to worry her needlessly, but I had mentioned that the Ivy League schools tend to attract our kind because I wouldn't want her to be caught completely off guard should we encounter anyone. There was always the chance that Jake's plans to attend the same university could be affecting her ability to see.

There weren't many with the desire or the control to live among humans even for the purpose of obtaining an education, but there were always exceptions. My siblings and I had encountered others in the past, but they typically didn't stay around more than one semester, if that.

The scent Alice found was probably nothing to be concerned about.

I refused to allow it to dampen my good mood.

I thought about our conversation with Charlie yesterday, which, although unexpected, had gone amazingly well. It felt good that we no longer needed to hide the truth from him, that we could truly be ourselves around him, after all this time. I could sense that he actually seemed to like me better knowing the truth. How it could be possible for my father-in-law to like me better knowing I'm a vampire is beyond me, but I had sensed it in his mind. We had essentially told him that I was a monster, who had killed his daughter to make her a monster like me, and he liked me _more_?

But he did. He liked that we were being fully honest with him now, and it was as if he had a newfound respect for me - he had seemed impressed by my talent and seemed proud - yes, proud - that I had been through medical school, and even more impressed that I had done it primarily for Carlisle's benefit. He thought I was selfless, like Bella.

Of course, he didn't know yet about the hundreds of people I slaughtered during my rebellious period, or the extent of the dangers I had placed Bella in when she was still human. James. Laurent. Victoria. The Volturi. A pack of young werewolves. An army of newborn vampires. He will probably hate me with a new fervor once any of that comes to light. Yes, Charlie would truly hate me, and justifiably so, if he ever knew the full truth. He also didn't know how I had slipped into Bella's room nearly every night when we were dating, and even before then, when she hadn't even known I was there - a one hundred and four year old teenage vampire stalker creeping into his daughter's room while he slept.

I stifled a grin lest Bella might ask what I was thinking.

Charlie doesn't need to know everything. For now, I would enjoy our new openness. I would enjoy his approval, undeserved thought it may be.

I would not allow the potential future revelation of my darker moments to sully my current good mood.

The sun was beginning to rise. A bright red Ferrari at 200 mph on a sunny day was a little too high of a risk even with my built-in radar detector, so I reduced my speed by half. We had left La Push around 8pm Pacific Time and had been traveling for about eight and a half hours. We were a little more than three quarters the way there. Another 5 hours at our current slower speed and we should arrive in my home city. Bella's estimate of about 14 hours was going to be right on target - we would be arriving at the house around noon Central Time.

I felt Bella's hand slip out of mine and looked over to see what she was doing. A beautiful smile lit up her face as she noted my look of concern, her eyes laughing at me, and her hand arrived at its new destination - the back of my neck - where she began massaging and running her fingers through the back of my hair. Very distracting.

"Is this okay?" she asked. "We could just hold hands again if you prefer."

Silly Bella. "This is more than okay," I assured her. "You have no idea how good that feels." I moved my now-empty hand to rest on her left leg and sighed contentedly.

* * *

I pulled slowly into the shaded drive. Home. The home of another lifetime. My home when I _was_ alive. My human home. I looked over at Bella as the house came into view, so I could enjoy her initial reaction.

"Edward, it's beautiful! I should have known, but I guess I wasn't expecting a hundred-year-old house to look so nice." She turned her head slowly, taking in all of the grounds surrounding the home. The house sat on a relatively large lot, in comparison to the others in the neighborhood, and was lined around all sides by mature trees, as was the driveway.

Carlisle had the foresight to plant those trees before we left Chicago those many years ago, after I had persuaded him that I fully intended to keep the house even though it was not in a location suitable for vampire-living. No easy access to the woods for hunting, no protection from the exposure of the sun, and surrounded by too many neighbors for my overly-sensitive ears which heard not only the surrounding voices but also the surrounding thoughts. At least Carlisle had solved one of those problems, making it a safer place for short visits.

As soon as I stepped out of the car I was hit with a familiar scent, about a day old. Alice! What had she been doing here?

Bella waited for me to open her car door - she had learned to humor me with my gentlemanly ways. She recognized the scent immediately as well.

"Alice is here?"

"No, she was apparently here yesterday, but she's nowhere nearby now. I don't hear her mind."

"Why would she come and then leave before we arrived?"

"I don't know, but I suspect we'll find some sort of surprise when we go in the house."

I took Bella's hand and we walked up to the front door. She continued looking around at the perfectly manicured lawn and the landscaping.

"Do you have a groundskeeper? It's just so... immaculate."

I chuckled lightly. "I have a lawn service that maintains it."

"All the time? You keep it like this all the time, for decades, with no one to see it?"

"Well, yes. You never know when we might want stop by. And I'm sure the neighbors wouldn't appreciate it if we let it go to ruin. Besides, it's not true that nobody sees it."

She looked confused. "Who is there to see it?"

"The lawn care workers." I laughed heartily at the expression on her face. I was positively giddy just being here with her.

She tried not to laugh but soon joined me. Not at my joke, I'm sure, but because my unrestrained laughter was infectious.

I opened the front door and deactivated the alarm system.

It was immediately clear what Alice had been up to. The sheets that had been placed over the furniture for protection from dust had been removed and the place was spotless. Gorgeous flower arrangements had been placed around the room. It smelled clean and fresh.

"That sneaky little pixie!" I borrowed Bella's favorite nickname for our sister. "She cleaned up and decorated."

"I'm not surprised," Bella responded. "We should have known that one house wouldn't be enough for her to decorate for us this week! It does look nice though."

"Yes, I definitely owe her one for this. So what do you think?"

"It's beautiful... It's great that you were able to grow up in such a nice home." She looked around the room. "Is that your piano?"

"Yes, well, it was my mother's. She taught me how to play."

"Will you play something for me on it?"

I walked around the piano and noticed a set of handwritten sheet music as I sat down on the bench. "Alice."

"What? Is she coming back?"

"No, she left some music out. She probably found it when she was cleaning - or more likely saw a vision of me playing it and decided to save us some time by leaving it out. It looks like something I must have written when I was human." I flipped through the pages, and as I glanced over the notes I realized parts of it looked more familiar than I expected.

"Play it for me?" Her golden eyes danced in anticipation.

"Of course, love." I hesitated, looking up at her. "It's not as... elaborate... as my more recent compositions."

"Of course not." She rolled her eyes - and managed to look adorable while doing so. "I'm sure I'll love it, just the same," she insisted.

I began playing, watching Bella's face, having already committed the notes to memory. I realized Alice had tuned the piano for me too. I definitely owed her for this. I saw flickers of recognition cross Bella's face at the expected places as I played the simple piece.

Suddenly her face lit up as she realized why it was familiar. "There are parts of my lullaby in there! And some parts remind me of the one you wrote for Esme."

I smiled. "Yes, apparently I remembered some of this subconsciously and incorporated it into my later pieces. I recognize some aspects as being similar to a song I wrote for Alice as well."

"Did you write this for your mother?" she asked gently as I came to the end of the song.

"I really don't remember, but I'm sure I did. There wasn't anyone else I would have written it for."

I began playing the piece again, picturing my mother's face in my mind, using the image I had from Carlisle's memories of her, and added embellishments and complexity to the piece.

Yes, this was dedicated to my mother, the woman who sacrificed her own health to take care of me when I was dying, the woman who unknowingly begged a vampire to save her son, the woman who had made it possible for me to exist long enough to meet my Bella. I changed the ending slightly, making it slower and more somber, so that it would be more fitting for this noble woman who now rested in death.

I looked over at Bella, half expecting to see a tear trailing down her cheek, as I had seen the very first time I had played for her, but of course I realized she couldn't cry now any more than I could.

She walked around the piano and sat next to me on the bench. "That was amazing." She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a hug. I hadn't realized until that moment just how much I needed one. "I think it's perfect for your mother," she told me . "I'm sure she would have enjoyed the enhancements you just made to it. She would be very proud of you."

Yes, she would be. Mother was always proud of me, though I never really understood why. I hadn't done anything exceptional during my human life. The ancient ache I always felt in my heart when thinking of her was beginning to intensify. I rested my head on Bella's shoulder, allowing her words, her touch, her scent to comfort me.

After several minutes, I decided it was time to continue Bella's tour of the house. I took her hand and led her into the dining room. There wasn't much of interest in here, just the table and a cabinet displaying Mother's fine china. I started to continue on to the next room but Bella seemed to find the room more interesting than I did.

"Do you remember eating in here with your family?" She ran her hand along the back of one of the chairs and went over to the china cabinet to look at the contents in more detail.

"Yes. We often ate late in the day because Father would get held up at the office and Mother liked us to all eat as a family. There was always a white tablecloth on the table." I was unsure why I suddenly recalled that inane detail, but I was determined to share everything I could remember with Bella, to answer her question as fully as possible. "Mother said grace before each meal and prayed for the war to end. I've told you that before, and how it was her greatest fear that I would go off to fight in the war and not return home."

"Do you remember any of the actual food? What was your favorite?"

I tried to search through my dim human memories, but there was nothing there concerning food. "No, I can't recall anything about the food. I know my mother was a good cook but I don't remember any specific meals or what my favorites might have been."

"Do you know anything about the china? Do you know how old it is?"

"It was her grandmother's." I was pleased that I somehow pulled the answer to that question from the dim recesses of my mind. "Probably from the 1850s or 1860s." I shrugged.

"Wow. It's beautiful." She really seemed intrigued by it. It was just a set of dishes, and a set we had rarely used at that. Must be a female thing.

"It's yours if you want it. We can take it with us to our new house, if you like."

"Oh, no!" She protested, her eyes open wide in alarm. "No, this belongs here. Besides, most of the guests we have who eat food are werewolves, and I'm not sure they would do well with fine china."

I laughed, picturing Jake eating from one of the fancy, highly breakable plates, or the pack sitting around a formal table sipping coffee or tea delicately from the small cups. Of course, Bella was probably thinking more of the roughhousing that generally occurred before and after their meals, especially when the pack was all together. No, fine china and werewolves would not mix well together. "You're right, love, as always. But if you see anything else you want just let me know and we'll take it with us. What's mine is yours."

I was rewarded with a smile and a quick kiss, and then she took my hand and we moved on to the next room. I looked around the kitchen, trying to recall anything I might be able to share with Bella about my human years. She seemed to enjoy every detail I could provide, no matter how insignificant.

I could picture my mother standing at the counter preparing food or at the sink washing dishes, and the breakfast table at one side of the room was comfortingly familiar. "I used to sit here at this table and do my homework in the evenings, and talked with Mother while she was preparing dinner."

"What did you talk about?"

"I don't remember anything in particular. I'm sure we talked about the war but I don't remember any specific conversations."

She turned on the water at the sink and seemed surprised that it worked.

"Yes, I keep the utility bills paid up." I chuckled at the slightly confused expression on her face.

"Did you have running water when you lived here or did you add that later? My Gran used to tell me stories about walking down to the spring to get drinking water when she was young, and that was in the 1940s."

Oh, that was the source of her confusion. "Your Gran must have lived in a rural area. Chicago had a city water system in place for more than a decade before I was born. I'm sure there were homes in the city that didn't have indoor plumbing, but the more well-to-do families did. I never thought about it being unusual when I was human."

"What about electricity? Gran didn't have that until she was a teenager."

"Yes, we had electric lighting. Like with the water, it wasn't common throughout the country, but this is Chicago, and my parents were fairly well off."

"Telephones?"

"We had one, but we could only make calls locally. There were exchanges with a couple other large cities - I think they were New York and San Francisco - but I'm not sure we ever made any long distance calls, since I doubt we knew anyone living in those cities. The phone should still be in Father's study - would you like to see it?"

"Sure." She smiled, taking my hand again.

We entered the office and stopped in front of Father's desk. Bookshelves lined the walls behind it, filled mostly with old books related to the legal field, books which my father had collected during law school and throughout his short career. Alice had even dusted the books, and there was a vase of fresh flowers at one corner of the desk. "I don't think Father ever kept a vase of flowers on his desk," I laughed.

I pointed out the now-antique phone on the table to the side of Father's desk. I was certain it used to be shinier - the surface had dulled with age. It was somewhat familiar to me, and yet it seemed positively archaic compared to my current mobile phone, with its colorful touch-screen interface, and its ability to call nearly anywhere in the world, access the internet, take pictures, and record video, among other myriad functions.

Bella inspected the telephone, no doubt having thoughts similar to mine on how much technology has improved in the last century. She glanced around the office, and then turned to me. "Did you spend much time in here with your father? You've never told me much about him."

"I don't remember as much about him. He worked long hours in his office at the law firm, and except for our family eating meals together, I don't think I spent much time with him during the week. I'm sure that's why the mealtimes were so important to Mother. I know he was a good man and that he cared for us - his job was just very demanding. I remember I would come in here at night sometimes when I needed to talk to him - he usually retreated to his study after dinner." I suddenly realized the parallel with Carlisle. "You know, I think the times that Carlisle feels the most like a real father to me is when I go to his office for our private chats. I never thought of it before, but it is remarkably similar to how I interacted with my human father."

Bella walked around to the other side of the desk and glanced over the selection of books on the shelves, then pulled out the chair from the desk. Before sitting down, she hesitated and looked up at me. "Is it okay if I sit here?"

"Of course." She could sit anywhere she wanted.

"Can I look in the desk drawers?"

"Of course, love. You can look at whatever you want. I told you, what's mine is yours." She didn't need to ask my permission.

She reached for the handle to pull open one of the drawers. "I know, but this was your father's. It feels a little like I'm trespassing, invading his personal space."

"I understand. It feels a little like that to me too. It's probably part of the reason I've never gone through his desk before. But really, it's fine. Go ahead."

"You've never looked at all? What if there was something important in here?"

"Carlisle went though everything before we left Chicago, and took out anything valuable and anything he thought might be important for me to have. For all I know, these drawers may be empty."

She pulled the drawer open and I walked around the desk to stand next to her. I had no idea what she might find. She pulled out a small stack of papers and placed them on top of the desk. They were yellowed with age, and looked brittle. She picked up the first one, handling it with the utmost care. It was folded in half like a greeting card.

At the top, printed in messy childish letters, it said "Happy Birthday, Father". There was a drawing underneath, but it was so rudimentary I wasn't certain what it was intended to represent. How embarrassing. Renesmee was more artistic at the age of six months. Bella gingerly opened the card, and inside the childish scrawl continued: "I love you Father Have a happy birthday. EDWARD" She turned it to the back, and in much neater, much smaller handwriting - probably my mother's - it said "Edward Masen, Jr., First Grade, February 7, 1908"

"This is so special!" Bella beamed up at me. "Do you remember making it and giving it to him?"

"No."

"Edward! What's wrong? Are you embarrassed?" She knew me too well.

"Maybe a little."

"Why?"

"Nessie was more skilled as an infant. You can see why I never became an artist. What is that picture supposed to be, anyway? You can't tell, can you?"

"Edward! You were six! And you were human! I think it's a great card. It obviously meant a lot to your dad - he kept it in his desk for all those years." She studied the picture, trying it from different angles as if that might help. "Hmmm... I think it's a horse. Or maybe a dog? Or if you turn it this way it could be a hill with a flower and a tree on it."

I leaned down so that my mouth was right next to her ear. "Bella. Can we move on? Please?"

She grabbed the back of my head while turning slightly in the chair and pulled me closer for a kiss, which I eagerly returned. Perhaps this would distract her from my childish artwork. Her kisses were so amazing... Perhaps I should carry her up to my bedroom to continue distracting her...

"I'm keeping this," she announced as she released me.

"No."

"You said I could have anything I wanted. What's yours is mine. This is mine and I'm keeping it."

"This is my father's. It should stay in his desk." It was a lame attempt and I knew she wouldn't buy it.

"Please?" I knew it. I knew she was going to use her secret weapon. She knew I couldn't resist her pleading.

"Okay," I relented, leaning back down for another kiss. "You know I love you."

"I know." She smiled smugly, placing the card on the left side of the desk in what I suspected was about to become a "keep" pile.

She looked carefully through the remaining papers. Great. More artwork. Apparently my skill did not improve much as I got older. The "keep" pile continued to grow.

The remaining desk drawers did not reveal much of interest - a few mundane legal documents, some ancient office supplies, a few old coins.

"Would you like to go up to my parents' room now? And look for the pictures?"

Her eyes lit up, but her expression immediately shifted to one of concern. "Are you sure? If it's too hard for you..."

"Bella, love. The pictures are the main reason I wanted to bring you here. I know you're excited about this no matter how hard you're trying to hide it. I've been really looking forward to watching you enjoy the pictures. Even if they're as embarrassing as my artwork." Surely they couldn't be that bad. It wasn't possible.

"Why would they be embarrassing?"

"I don't really remember what I looked like. I'm not sure what we're going to find." Bella knew only the version of me which had been enhanced by vampire venom - a false perfection that was not really mine. What would she think of my true human form?

"Don't be silly. There's no way you could have been less than gorgeous. But I was more concerned about the pictures of your parents. Are you sure you're ready?"

"I'm ready." I would have to be. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile and led her up the steps to the second floor.

I opened the door to my parents' room. Another dust-free room, with fresh flowers on the dresser, and I could tell from the scent that the linens had all been freshly washed. I looked at the closet door and wondered briefly if Alice might have stocked it with the latest fashions. No... She wouldn't...

"Did you always live in this house?" Bella's questions always surprised me. Did she think we had a summer home somewhere else?

"What?"

"Did you always live here? Ever since you were born? Or did you move here later, when you were older?"

"Oh. Yes, we always lived here as far as I can remember. The deed to the house was dated 1899, the same year my parents married. I assume they moved in right after their wedding. I don't remember us ever staying anywhere else. Why?"

"Never mind, it was nothing."

"Bella? You know how that drives me insane. Please tell me what you're thinking?"

"You don't want to know."

"Yes, I do."

"You don't. Trust me."

I locked my eyes on hers. I would have to dazzle it out of her. "I assure you, I do want to know." I flashed my signature crooked smile. "I always want to know what you're thinking. Especially when you ask an odd question out of the blue and then refuse to explain why." I stepped closer and leaned in so that I was mere inches from her face. "Pleeeeeease?" I smiled victoriously as she leaned even closer to take in my scent. I began trailing wet kisses down her neck, and back up to her ear.

"Um... I was thinking... you were probably conceived in that bed."

What? "Okay, you win. You were right. That is one time I did _not_ want to know what you were thinking." Now, _there_ was a mental image I was not expecting to have today.

"You should have listened to me," she smirked. "That's what you get for dazzling me."

She was right. I had asked for it.

I tried to clear my head as I reached for the closet door, but Bella stopped me from pulling it open, placing her hand over mine. "Promise you'll tell me if this gets too hard for you. We'll stop if anything makes you feel too uncomfortable."

"I promise. But I'll be fine." I opened the door, and there hung my mother's dresses and my father's suits, from a century prior. I didn't look at them too closely.

I was relieved to see that Alice had left the interior of the closet untouched. This was a more personal area, and dust or no dust, I wished to share it with Bella before sharing anything we found with Alice. Of course, Alice had probably seen that. Fortunately, with the closet door being kept closed, not much dust had found its way inside.

I noticed the painting I had seen as a newborn on the floor beneath the clothes; actually all I could see was the edge of the frame, but I recognized it. There were a few other framed photographs stacked neatly on top of it. Carlisle had probably removed framed photos from throughout the house after my initial outburst. I pulled the stack out into the bedroom, and picked up the large painting. "This is the one I remember seeing as a newborn, the one that triggered the little tantrum I told you about." I watched her expression carefully as I held it up for her.

"That's you?" Bella was smiling like a kid on Christmas morning who had just started opening gifts. I nodded affirmatively in response to her question. "You were even perfect as a kid!" she declared. "I knew you were adorable." She paused as her eyes moved to my parents' faces on the canvas. "I can see where you got your good looks. You got the best features from each of them - your mother's eyes and nose, your father's mouth and jaw line. How old were you here?"

"I'm not sure, probably about ten or eleven."

"How are you feeling? Does this picture stir up any memories?"

"I'm fine. Whenever I think of my parents, this picture and the images from Carlisle's memories are what I see in my mind. My own memories from when I was human have faded so much that I don't remember what they looked like in between, or when I was younger. Everything is too fuzzy. Other than that, my main memory with this painting is Carlisle removing it from the wall."

"What would you think about taking this one with us for our new house?"

I smiled. "I thought you might want this one. That would be fine. We can tell people the boy was my great-grandfather."

I was thoroughly enjoying Bella's excitement. She kept looking at the painting, not seeming ready to move on to the next one.

"What are you thinking?

"I was thinking that your green eyes were just as beautiful as I had imagined."

I wondered if she wished they were still green, but I didn't ask because I knew she would deny it regardless of her true thoughts. To be completely honest with myself, I did miss the deep rich brown of her human eyes, but of course her eye color was really not important. "Do you think it looks like me?"

"Yes, just a lot younger and with green eyes." She grinned. "You were cute instead of sexy."

She took the painting from me and placed it carefully on the floor a few feet away from closet. It looked like the beginning of another "keep" pile.

I handed her the next picture from the stack. It was a framed black and white photo of my parents, looking much younger. Father was wearing a suit, probably not unusual for him judging from the contents of their closet, and Mother was wearing a simple white dress. They looked very happy.

"Is this their wedding picture?" Bella looked up at me expectantly, as if I would know the answer. I tried to remember if I had even seen the picture before as a human, but I was coming up blank.

"I really don't know but it's a good possibility." I pulled the back off the frame so I could check for writing on the back of the picture and got lucky - their wedding date was written on the back. "Yes, it's a wedding picture." I reassembled the frame and we both looked at the picture for a while longer. I had no memories of them looking so young. Obviously, since I hadn't been born yet. But still, they didn't quite look like my parents, even though I knew they were. Humans change and age so quickly. "I think I'd like to take this one home with us too," I told her. Bella watched happily as I placed it with the large painting.

I sat back down on the floor to Bella's left and picked up the next picture. This one caught me off guard. It was another portrait of me with my parents - probably the last one we ever had made. It was larger than the wedding picture but smaller than the painting. We looked much the same as what I had seen in Carlisle's memories, but much healthier and happier.

This was what Bella had been hoping we might find - a picture of me shortly before I was changed. Knowing this, I focused on the image of myself first, My hair was parted in the middle and combed down on each side, but otherwise my face didn't look as different as I had expected. Facial features were nearly the same as they are now. My jawline was perhaps a bit less defined and my shoulders were narrower. I looked weaker, more human, but thankfully not as frail and sickly as the young man Carlisle remembered.

Satisfied that my own image was not too embarrassing, I allowed my gaze to move to my parents' smiling faces. The ache in my heart grew a little stronger. Their lives had been senselessly cut short. They should have had many more happy days and years together. If not for the Spanish Influenza, I would have had many more years to spend with them, and I would not have nearly forgotten them. They deserved to be remembered. I stared silently at the picture for several minutes. I tried to remember the day it was made, tried to remember anything from the time when my parents looked as they appeared in the picture. What kind of son was I, to forget so much about his own parents? Why wasn't this picture triggering any memories?

"Edward, talk to me." I looked up at Bella, her eyes ablaze with concern. "And don't tell me you're 'fine' or 'okay'. I want to know what you're feeling right now."

What _was_ I feeling? What _should_ I be feeling? What had I expected? Bella was still waiting for a answer. "I'm not sure how to explain it."

She put her left arm around my back and held the picture with her free hand. "Does this one make you feel sad? You miss your parents? Do you remember them looking like this?"

"I suppose I do feel sad, but not with quite the intensity I was expecting. It was so long ago. There's definitely a sense of loss, and it is a bit stronger looking at this picture, but it's not even a fraction of what I felt when I thought I had lost you. I never grieved properly when my parents died because I was too busy adapting to life as a vampire. I had thought it might hit me today, looking at the pictures, but I think it may be too late. I've forgotten too much. I've waited too long. I should have come back and looked at these pictures soon after the newborn period was over."

"Edward, are you feeling _guilty_?"

"Maybe a bit," I admitted. Yes, that was exactly what I felt. It was my own fault that I couldn't remember more, and my parents deserved better.

"It's not your fault that you can't remember, and there's no guarantee that you would have remembered more if you had looked though the pictures sooner. You told me Carlisle said the fever contributed to your memory loss - you lost more memories during your change than most of us."

"I've wondered sometimes if that was really true, or if I just suppressed the memories to avoid dealing with the emotions - suppressed them so long that I lost them."

"You're doubting Carlisle's diagnosis?" she challenged.

I felt a hint of a smile on my face. "Maybe it was a combination of the fever and my reluctance to deal with the memories."

"Your mother would have wanted you to be happy. You know that," she insisted, as her right hand went up to my neck and gently pulled my head over to her left shoulder. She began running her fingers through my hair. I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation as I allowed her words to comfort me. "She wouldn't want you to be overcome with grief a hundred years after her death, and she wouldn't want you feeling guilty about what you can't remember, or to feel guilty for not grieving more. She would be pleased that you remember her at all, and I'm sure she would be glad that you can do it without it being too painful."

"You're right. But I still wish I remembered more. I remember enough to know that she deserves to be remembered. My father, too. I don't remember feeling as close to him, but I know I respected him and that he cared about me. I just wish I remembered more about him. More about our time together as a family."

Bella dropped her hand from my head as she turned back to look at the picture again, but her left hand moved up to replace it and began playing absentmindedly with my hair. "They both look so happy in this picture. I bet they're thinking about what a fine son they have. They had to have been proud of you. And I was right - you do look gorgeous. I don't know what you were so worried about. You looked perfect even when you were human! Your physical appearance didn't change much at all. You're just a little more muscular now."

"So if you had met me in 1918 when I was human..."

"I have no doubt that I would have been just as dazzled by your gorgeous green eyes as I am now by your topaz eyes. Not to mention your perfect face. I'll bet you had as many girls after you as a human as you do whenever you're enrolled in high school now. Are you_ sure_ you never had a girlfriend as a human?"

I laughed. "I'm pretty sure I would remember if I had a girlfriend. No, my mother's love was the only love I knew before you. That's probably why it took me so long to make sense of my emotions when I was falling in love with you. I had no basis for comparison - those feelings were totally foreign to me."

"So you just ignored all the girls who were falling all over you in school, like you do now?"

"I don't remember girls falling all over me in school. I don't remember receiving any special attention. I'm pretty sure I was just an average boy. If any girls did have an interest in me, I was probably too focused on the war to notice. Besides, girls in those days were much more reserved - throwing themselves at a guy like Lauren or Jessica would do, would have been considered very improper. They wouldn't have risked their reputations like that."

"And you couldn't read minds as a human, so you didn't realize what they were really thinking about you."

I laughed at her insistence that those girls would have seen me as she does. Regardless of what she might think, I did look more "normal" as a human, and I didn't think I would have attracted as much attention with my human body. The demure young ladies of my day wouldn't have had improper thoughts about me. Would they?

"So you would have liked my green eyes?"

"Your eyes would captivate me no matter what color they were. But yes, they were a very nice shade of green."

"What about my hair? Should I go back to this style?"

She laughed. "No, I think I prefer the current style. Much sexier. I've always loved your hair. It's a little longer now than in this picture, isn't it?" She tried to part it with her fingers and smooth it down to the sides to check.

"Yes. When the epidemic broke out, we tried to avoid public places like the barber shop. I was probably overdue for a cut then, but apparently my parents didn't try to do it at home, and then we all got sick..." I shrugged. "Carlisle thought I should leave it, since it will never grow back."

Her fingers felt so good in my hair, and as comforting as the gesture was, the feeling of her fingers lovingly stroking the top of my head and the back of my neck had been distracting me throughout our conversation. Now that she had both hands in my hair, I put my arms around her and leaned in for a kiss.

After a rather long and enjoyable kiss, we pulled apart and looked at each other, smiling.

"Thank you, Bella."

"For what? The kiss?"

"Well, for that too, but I meant for looking through these pictures with me. I'm so glad we're doing this together. It's easier with you here. I'd probably be wallowing in self-pity and guilt if I tried to do this alone, but with you here I'm actually enjoying it."

"I'm glad. I'm enjoying this too. Are you ready to look at some more?"

I picked up the next picture and turned it so that we could both see. It was another picture of me, apparently made the same day as the one of me with my parents.

"You look so serious. I wonder what you were thinking about."

"Probably the war, if I had to guess. Or the photographer may have asked me to pose that way." I shrugged. I had no memory of having the picture taken.

"Can we keep this one too?"

"Of course." I smiled as I noted that of the first four pictures we found, all four were now in the "keep" pile. "Why don't we just plan to take all the pictures home with us, and you can just let me know if there's one you _don't_ want?"

"Deal." She returned my smile and gave me a quick kiss that seemed to say "thank you." Or perhaps she was relieved that I wasn't having any extreme reactions to the pictures. I was a bit relieved about that myself.

She reached for the final picture that had been stacked in the bottom of the closet and turned it so we could see it. It was a man and woman I did not recognize, standing in front of a house. The woman wore a long dress, and the man wore a suit which did not seem to fit properly. Judging by his rugged face and hands I imagined he would have preferred overalls. I did not recall ever meeting these people, but the picture itself seemed oddly familiar. It came to me suddenly. "They were my grandparents. This picture was always here in this room, on Mother's dresser."

Bella was looking at me expectantly, to see if I would remember anything else. I closed my eyes and focused on my memory of the picture sitting in this room over a hundred years ago. I began to recall my mother's voice telling me how much she missed her parents.

"They were my mother's parents. I don't recall ever meeting them. They must have died when I was very young. My mother missed them deeply. There was such sadness and love in her voice when she spoke of them."

Bella rubbed my shoulder. "You just now remembered all of that?"

I nodded.

"This picture seems different from the others - less formal," she observed.

"Yes, the others appear to have been taken in a professional portrait studio, although I don't actually remember going to one. This one was probably taken in front of their own house. It looks like they wanted to dress up for the picture but the clothes didn't fit properly. Judging by the clothing and the condition of their house, I suspect they were not as well off as the rest of my family."

Bella looked thoughtful - possibly comparing her own family's financial situation to that of my mother's, and how she and my mother had both married into a family that was relatively wealthy - but she didn't comment. She just looked up at me and asked, "Is that all the pictures? I remember you saying there might be a box with some more."

Yes, the box was still there. I had seen it when we first opened the closet, sitting on top of the shelf above the rod holding the clothes. I stood up and took the box down from the shelf, then sat back down on the floor next to Bella and placed it in front of her. I wanted her be the one to open it. As much as I was enjoying this myself, this day was for Bella and I was eager to watch her excitement at whatever we might find in there.

"Wow! It's beautiful!" She turned the box around, admiring it. She seemed to be using the word "beautiful" a lot today.

"What were you expecting, cardboard?" I grinned.

"Well, yes, actually. That's how Renée stores her pictures that aren't in albums yet. Is this hand-carved? I love cherry."

"Yes, it's hand-carved. My father made it for her." Where had that memory come from? "He enjoyed woodworking as a hobby. He had a shop out back. I had forgotten all about that. He sometimes spent time out there on weekends."

Bella smiled at me, happy that a few random memories were resurfacing for me.

"Go ahead and open it," I encouraged her. "I want to see what's in there as much as you do."


	11. The Box

Chapter 11: The Box

I held my breath as she slowly opened the lid, and breathed a sigh of relief at the realization that the pictures were still there. Of course they were; I had no reason to suspect they would be gone. There were even more pictures than I remembered, and some papers and envelopes as well.

Bella picked up the first photograph and held it up for me to see. It was a picture of me, around fifteen years old, standing with a girl I didn't recognize, both of us in formal attire.

"And who is this?" Bella asked, arching one eyebrow. She was trying hard to look indignant but a smile was threatening to overtake her face.

"I have no idea," I laughed. "It was apparently made at one of the many dances I attended with my parents. In my father's social circle, there were many formal occasions and fundraisers which they felt obligated to attend, and I was expected to tag along. She was probably the daughter of one of his partners or clients."

The next six pictures were similar, with me between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, but with different girls. Bella was laughing out loud by the time she got to the third one. I was glad she could laugh about it -- it would have been very silly for her to feel jealous or threatened by a girl I danced with one time a hundred years ago, whom I had no memory of, and had probably been dead for thirty or more years by now. I tried to imagine how I would feel if I found similar pictures of Bella with various dance partners -- I would definitely feel jealous even though I would know it was unreasonable. But I know the type of thoughts that would be going through the mind of any boy lucky enough to dance with Bella, so I did not consider it to be an even comparison.

"You don't remember any of them?" she laughed.

I shook my head. "I probably didn't even know them then. It was just a social obligation and our parents matched us up for the evening."

She was still laughing. "And you didn't think you had girls falling all over you! Either you were lying about that or you were exceptionally unobservant as a human!"

"Why do you say that? Just because a girl was willing to stand next to me for a picture doesn't necessarily mean she was falling all over me."

"Look at their faces! Look at those smiles!" She laughed some more. "I assure you, they were thrilled to have you as their dance partner."

"You're silly." I grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. "What else is in that box? Surely there can't be too many more of these."

The next picture was of me again, around age six, hugging a big shaggy dog.

"Watch!" I exclaimed as memories of my pet came flooding back to me.

"Huh?"

"It's my dog, Watch! I'd forgotten I had a pet! I loved that dog." How could I have forgotten him? Whatever happened to him when my parents died and I was changed? Oh, I remember -- he died when I was about twelve and Father buried him in the back yard. My parents offered to buy me another dog, but I didn't want to replace him -- he was too special to be replaced.

Bella started giggling. "You named your dog 'Watch'? So he was like a watchdog?" She giggled some more. I loved seeing her so happy and lighthearted. She was adorable when she was teasing me.

I growled playfully. "Maybe he was. Do you have a problem with my dog's name?" I thought about pouncing and tickling her, but I knew where that would lead, and I did want to finish going through this box before Jake and Nessie arrived. Bella and I would have all night to be together.

"Oh, no. I think it's adorable! Did you name him yourself?"

"I might have had some help from my father."

"You were a really cute kid," she said, looking at the picture again. "This one's definitely a keeper."

The next picture was a formal portrait and I looked about four.

"If you had Renesmee's hair and eyes, you could have been twins!"

"The similarity is striking, isn't it?" I saw more of Bella in our daughter than she did, but I didn't want to get into an argument. Our daughter was the perfect blend of the two of us, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

We continued looking through the rest of the pictures. Most were of myself at various ages, and there were several of my parents, and a few of my grandparents -- both sets -- and even some of my great-grandparents and one set of great-great-grandparents.

I would not have known who was in the older pictures, but they had all been carefully labeled on the back, listing the full names as well as the relation to either my father or my mother. It was interesting seeing the similarities in the physical features of various family members, and seeing how certain physical traits had been passed down through the generations. Bella was amazed to find pictures so old. She was especially intrigued by the picture of my mother's grandfather in his civil war uniform. It was a bit odd to think that he potentially could have fought against Jasper, as they were on different sides in the war.

After we had examined the last picture, Bella pulled out an envelope addressed to my mother with her maiden name.

"Ooooh, this looks like it might be a love letter your dad wrote to your mom." Bella's eyes danced in excitement.

Somehow I didn't feel right about opening the letter. It was likely of a personal nature between my parents and was not intended for my eyes. But I couldn't deny Bella, and she wanted to read it. I decided to say nothing, and simply waited for her to open it.

"What's wrong? You don't think we should open it, do you?" She was reading me too well once again. Was I really that transparent?

"I was just debating with myself. I'm just not sure if they would have wanted me to read it. It wasn't written to me and I'm not sure they'd want their son reading their love letters. But I decided I want you to go ahead. They're gone, and it's part of my history. I want to share it with you." Even if it wasn't really mine to share.

She looked thoughtful as she considered this. "If something happened to both of us, and a hundred years from now Nessie found a love letter you had written to me, wouldn't you want her to read it? To know how much her parents loved one another? Besides, I don't think your mother would have left this in here with all the family pictures if she was worried about you coming across it."

"That's a good point. Actually, two good points. Would you read it to me please?"

"Sure." She gently pulled the yellowed paper from the envelope, carefully unfolded it, and began reading aloud.

* * *

_April 15, 1899_

_My Dearest Elizabeth,_

_I hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits. I myself have been very busy in my final days here at law school. I received your letter on Monday and it brightened my day as always. _

_My father paid me a visit today in another attempt to persuade me to conform to his plans for my life. I told him in no uncertain terms that I will not marry his partner's daughter. Cynthia seems to be a respectable young lady, but I have eyes only for you, my love. I will not bend to his will, not this time. I wanted to tell him of our engagement but I kept quiet as you requested. He will learn soon enough, and I care little about his reaction._

_When I return home next month I will ask for your father's blessing. I am eager to begin my life with you. You are my life now, Elizabeth._

_Keep smiling and write often._

_Yours truly and forever,_

_Ed Masen_

_

* * *

_Bella looked up at me, waiting for my reaction.

I scrambled to organize my thoughts. I was relieved that the contents did not seem so personal that I felt guilty about us reading it. It contained no earth-shattering family secrets, but did provide some new insight into my parents' relationship with one another. They had become engaged while he was in law school, but were apparently maintaining a long-distance relationship while he was there. He was defying his father's wishes by choosing to marry her. Why wouldn't my paternal grandfather have approved of my mother? Was it because she did not come from a family of wealth? I had never realized before today that my parents likely came from such different backgrounds.

My paternal grandfather was apparently overbearing and meddlesome. I could not recall ever meeting him or my grandmother. Did Father become estranged from his parents because of his marriage to Mother? Or did I know them but just don't remember them now?

Bella was still waiting for me to say something.

"I didn't know that about him marrying her against his father's wishes. I'm glad we read it -- I feel like I know my father a little better now." I wondered if there were more letters somewhere. If they had been maintaining a long-distance relationship, surely there was more correspondence. Why was this letter the only one saved with the pictures?

"'You are my life now.'" Bella quoted. "That's the same thing you said to me the first time I told you I loved you. Did you get the expression from your dad?"

"Not consciously. I'm not sure if I ever heard him say that to her. And that wasn't the first time you told me you loved me." I smiled, remembering the first time she declared her love for me, in so many words. How I had relished the unedited thoughts I was privy to only during her sleeptalking. I truly missed those nightly glimpses into her subconscious, but I had to admit I much preferred having her awake with me all night.

"Okay, the first time I was awake. That was the first time that counted though." Did she really believe that? I strongly disagreed, but again, I was not going to start an argument. "Do you remember the first time you said 'I love you' to me?" she continued.

"Of course I do. It was right after I ran you up to the baseball field." Did she really think I could have forgotten?

She smiled broadly. "I wasn't sure at the time if you realized that was the first time you said it. It came out so casually, as if you thought I already knew."

"Didn't you?" She would had to have been much more than exceptionally unobservant to not have figured it out by that point.

"Of course I did, but I hadn't heard you say the words. I had been starting to wonder why you hadn't said it yet."

"Actually, I had told you several times before that, but I realized that afternoon that I hadn't said it while you were awake." I grinned sheepishly. "I decided I should say it when you could hear me."

"Alice got after you?"

"Yes." I laughed.

She looked down at the letter again. "Did your father go by Ed?" She was curious about his signature.

"He only let Mother call him that." I smiled at the memory. "His close friends called him Edward. To everyone else, he was 'Mr. Masen' or 'sir'."

"Would you let me call _you_ Ed?"

She knew how it annoyed me when my brothers or random acquaintances tried to shorten my name. Had she been secretly wishing to give me a nickname all these years? "You may call me anything you want, love." Would she call me Ed from here on out? Or would she come up with something more... creative?

"Don't worry, Edward, I'm just teasing. I love your name and I don't like when people shorten it. 'Edward' is just more _you_. It seems more gentlemanly, more old-fashioned."

I tried not to show the relief I felt at those words, but I apparently failed. She laughed softly, and gave me a kiss as if apologizing. She probably _was_ apologizing -- she always was, even when there was nothing to apologize for. I didn't ask; I simply returned the gesture. I would never get enough of her kisses. She deepened the kiss and pushed me back onto the hardwood floor. She was no longer apologizing. I wanted her at least as much as she wanted me, but not on my parents' bedroom floor.

"There are still a few things left in the box," I reminded her gently, not wanting to pull away. "Why don't we finish going through those now, before Nessie and Jake get here, and I can show you my bedroom next?"

Bella reluctantly sat up in silent agreement and pulled some papers from the box. One was a newspaper clipping of my father's obituary. Nothing new there, just the names and dates which were already familiar. There was also an article telling about the epidemic including some statistics on how many people had died up to that point, and a description of the impact to the city of Chicago. There were a few more newspaper clippings of various events that my mother apparently found memorable or which mentioned my father's law firm in some way, but I didn't recognize anything personal or special about any of them. After that, Bella held up a handmade card I had made my mother for her birthday I cringed at my artwork. I was definitely not a talented child. Bella, of course, loved it.

After seven more embarrassing pieces of artwork, she pulled out an envelope addressed simply to 'Edward.' "This is the last one," she said as she handed it to me. "Do you think it might be a love letter from your mother to your father?"

"Probably." I turned it over and realized it was still sealed. "It's never been opened. Maybe she wrote it after he died and never intended for it to be read."

"Or maybe she wrote it to you. Like the note I wrote Renesmee when I knew the Volturi were coming."

Could it be? Could my mother have written me a letter that it took me nearly a century to find? My curiosity got the best of me. I carefully opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. It started out "My son." Yes, it was written to me.

Bella placed her hand on mine and asked, "Would you like me to give you some privacy?"

"No, stay here with me. I need you." I would definitely need her if I was going to read this. "You can read along with me." She embraced me from the side, her right arm around my back and her left hand resting on my chest, her chin perched on my shoulder. I held the letter so that she could more easily see and we both read silently.

* * *

_Dear Edward,_

_My son, if you are reading this, it means that you are the only one of our family to have survived this horrid epidemic. Your father's death has been devastating to me. I am beginning to show some of the same symptoms he had in the beginning, and I am not sure I have the strength, in my grief, to survive this. But you are young and strong. You must go on. You must._

_I know you have your heart set on fighting in that confounded war but I beg you to think long and hard before volunteering. Yes, it is a noble cause to want to fight for your country, but there are so many young men just like yourself who go over there feeling invincible and return home dead, or do not return at all. Please do not become one of the casualties. This war will end, with or without your participation, and I have a feeling it won't last much longer. _

_You are a bright young man, so thoughtful and caring, so intuitive about what others are thinking and feeling. It would be a great loss to the world if you ceased to exist. It is my greatest wish that you will live to marry and have children and just be happy. I know that is not where your thoughts are right now, but the most joyful moments of my life were when I married your father and when you were born into our family. I hope you can experience such joy someday as well._

_I want you to know how proud I am of you, regardless of whether you ever become a soldier. I am proud to have a son who is so intelligent, so talented, so considerate of others, so conscientious about doing the right thing. I know you will always mind your manners and behave as a gentleman. You will make a fine husband someday and your wife will be fortunate to have you. Whoever you choose to spend your life with, please know that you have my blessing and your father's as well._

_You have comforted me so many times in the past, and you always knew exactly what to say to make me feel better, and when it was best to say nothing at all. I can't tell you how much it helped to have your comforting arms around me when we received the news of your father's death, though I knew you yourself were grieving as well. I just wish I could be there to comfort you now._

_I love you always._

_Mama_

_

* * *

  
_

I somehow made it through the entire letter before the tearless sobs overtook me. I dropped the letter and pulled Bella closer to me. As always, she knew exactly what I needed. She just held me close and allowed me to release some of the grief that had been bottled up inside for so many decades. I wasn't sure how long we sat there. A few minutes? A few hours? Then, as suddenly as they had started, the sobs ended. I swallowed and sat back, checking my watch. It was nearly 8pm. We had been sitting like that for over an hour.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," I told her. I had hoped to make it through this visit without having such a breakdown.

"Never. Never be sorry for that. I'm here for you, however you need me. It's my turn to comfort you for a change. Do you feel better after letting it out?"

"Yes, oddly, I do. I know that emotional outburst was long overdue -- I've had it coming for about ninety-eight years now. I can't tell you how much it means to have you here with me for this, for all of this, for today. I couldn't have done this without you -- I wouldn't have gone through the pictures and I might never have found that letter."

"She loved you so much. And you've done what she wanted. Maybe not the way she was envisioning, but she would still be so proud of you."

"I do have what she wanted for me. A loving wife, a beautiful daughter. And joy. I definitely have joy. You have brought me so much joy." I caressed her cheek and jaw with my fingertips.

"I wish I could have met her. And your father too. I wish I could have known them."

"I wish they could have met you, too. They would have loved you. And Renesmee. I wish they could have known their granddaughter."

"Speaking of Renesmee -- she and Jake could be here any time now. If they left at 6am like they planned -- you know Jake will push the car to its limits even in the daytime whenever they're not in an area with heavy traffic, and their car is faster than my Ferrari."

"Right. But Jake will need to stop and eat, and traffic will be heavier in the daytime than it was for us... Let's give them a call and see where they are." I was looking forward to showing Nessie the house and the pictures we'd found, but I was also hoping for a little more time alone with Bella before they got here.

I called Renesmee and she estimated another four hours before they would arrive. So they would get here around midnight. She sounded really tired already, so I asked if she still wanted to see the house tonight, or if she'd rather go straight to their hotel and get the tour in the morning. She said they would stop by tonight for few minutes before going to their hotel, and then return tomorrow for the more detailed tour. She sounded almost as eager to see the house and pictures as Bella had been -- she was too excited to wait until morning, even though she and Jacob were both no doubt exhausted and needing to sleep. I told her to just come on in when they get here -- I would leave the front door unlocked for them.

"Should we sort through the pictures," Bella asked, "and set aside the ones we think Nessie would be the most interested in? We could show her those tonight, and save the rest for tomorrow or another day."

"Yes, that's an excellent idea." We both selected our favorites and put the rest back in the box. I put the newspaper clippings and the love letter from my father to my mother back into the box as well.

Bella picked up the letter from my mother from where I had dropped it on the floor. She refolded it and put it back in the envelope. "Should I put this somewhere else? I'm not sure if you would want to share it with Nessie and Jake yet..."

"Would it be okay if I put it in your purse? I want to share it with Nessie someday, but you're right -- not tonight. I feel like I've been on an emotional roller coaster today. I don't want to lose it in front of Jake."

"Sure." She handed me the letter.

I ran downstairs and dropped it into Bella's purse, which she had left by a chair in the living room, and then I rushed back up to her side.

I briefly showed her the guest room, which held virtually nothing of interest. It had a nice set of antique furniture, but nothing that generated any memories for me.

I then led her to my childhood bedroom. Alice had meticulously cleaned in here as well. Everything was dusted, and the linens smelled freshly washed. And of course there was a vase of fresh flowers perched on my desk next to the folded 1918 newspaper I had been reading before I got sick. A calendar turned to September 1918 hung on the wall above my desk.

Bella went over to my bookshelf and immediately pulled out my yearbook from my junior year. My picture in the yearbook was identical to one of the ones we had just seen in the box. I looked over the faces of my classmates, and although some of them seemed familiar, I didn't really remember anything about any of them. I started to close the book and put it away, but Bella caught a glimpse of handwriting inside the front cover and she decided it required closer inspection. She read aloud all of the brief notes my classmates had written when signing my yearbook. Most of them declared me to be a "nice boy" or a "good friend", and several thanked me for helping them with this or that. Bella teased me a bit about the disproportionate number of comments from female versus male classmates. I was glad she could be a good sport about it, because I honestly did not remember these people, and all of the comments were quite harmless and mostly generic.

Next, she looked through the drawers of my desk and my dresser, but they were all empty. Carlisle and I had packed up most of my personal belongings when we left Chicago. My small closet was empty as well.

"Well, I think you've seen the whole house now," I announced. "Would you care to relax with me for a bit until Nessie and Jake get here?" I hopped onto the bed and scooted over to one side, leaving room for Bella to sit next to me.

"Does it feel weird for you to have me here in your childhood room?" she asked as she sat down next to me. "Wouldn't it have been considered highly inappropriate for you to have a girl up here in your room, sitting on your bed with you, no less?"

"Not if the girl was my wife," I smirked. "I know what you mean though, it does feel a little weird. Did it feel weird to you the first time we spent the night in your old bedroom as a married couple?"

"Yeah," she smiled at the memory," but I think a lot of it was because I could hear every little sound Charlie made while he was sleeping, and the fact that I knew _he_ knew we were in my bed together. It wasn't exactly the first time you had spent the night in my room, you know."

"No, but it was the first time neither of us were sleeping." I wagged my eyebrows at her Emmett-style and she laughed.

She leaned her head over onto my shoulder and I put my arm around her. It felt so good to be here with her, and to have some time to relax with just the two of us.

"Are you still glad we looked through the pictures?" she asked. "Was there anything you wished you hadn't found, or any memories you wish hadn't resurfaced?"

"I'm very glad we did this," I told her honestly. "I don't regret anything we found. The letter from Mother -- it made me miss her more, made me remember her more, and reminded me of how close we had been, but that's a good thing. Like I said before, she deserves to be remembered. I think I might be able to read it again without falling apart like that."

"There's nothing wrong with falling apart occasionally. We all do it. It was a very touching letter. No one could read a letter like that from a deceased parent and not get emotional."

"I love you, Bella." I love you. I need you. I want you. I've missed you.

She tilted her face up to look at me and smiled sweetly. I leaned down to kiss her luscious lips.

She pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it onto the floor. I started to do the same with hers but ripped it in my haste. Who was the genius who put buttons in the back? Oh well, it's on the floor with mine now.

"I've missed having this time with you the last couple nights," I whispered in her ear and trailed kisses down her throat.

"Me too..."

* * *

**(Three and a half hours later)**

I tried to lie still as Bella ran her hands over me. Up my torso, over my shoulders, ever so gently onto my face... Her shield was down and if I distracted her and made her lose focus it would go back up. I never wanted this to end. Her ministrations would have been heavenly even if her shield had been up, but with it down... The experience was mind-blowing. To hear her reflecting on the sensations she felt as her fingers glided over my skin, to hear the thoughts triggered in her mind when she touched me, to hear how she responded to my scent, all while she purposefully contemplated all the things she loved about me... To see myself through her eyes as she touched me... I suppressed a moan of pleasure lest I distract her too much.

Aside from the mental effort required to remind myself to lie still and not react to her touches, my mind was completely focused on her unshielded thoughts. I absorbed every conscious thought, every word, every image, every nuance slipping in from her subconscious, every tangent, every single one of the multiple lines of thought her immortal brain was capable of processing simultaneously.

She rarely offered me this gift of her mind. I had stopped asking her for it years ago, after I had heard in her mind a stray subconscious thought about how uncomfortable she was giving up her mental privacy even for me. I have robbed everyone around me of their privacy for the last ninety-eight years, and I am determined not to rob Bella of hers as well. She is the only one immune to my power and I will not try to coerce her into giving up that immunity. But whenever she freely offers me this gift, I soak it up and revel in it. I consider it to be our highest level of intimacy and I will never take it for granted.

I wish this moment could go on forever.

_"That's odd, I wonder why they didn't come to the door to meet us."_

"Maybe they're upstairs. The stench seems stronger up here..."

Bella's shield snapped back into place. I was jolted back to reality from my euphoric state, realizing suddenly that Jake was on his way up the stairs. I had been so focused on Bella's mind that I hadn't been hearing anything else. I had been ignoring the neighbors' minds all day, letting the words and images blur into a dull roar of background noise, and once I focused on Bella it had been even easier to ignore everything else. Apparently both Bella and I had been so distracted we hadn't even heard the audible sounds of the car pulling in, the car doors opening and closing, the footsteps approaching the house, the front door opening, or the security system chiming after the door opened. Now Jake was on his way up the stairs, and Nessie would not be far behind him.

Our clothes were scattered on the floor. Bella was on top of me, on my childhood bed. We had at most three seconds to get ourselves presentable before our son-in-law would walk through my open bedroom door.


	12. Surprises

Chapter 12: Visitor

Bella heard Jake's voice at the same time I did, and we both leaped out of the bed. I threw on my shirt and pants at vampire speed and kicked my underwear under the bed. Bella did the same and finished at the same time I did, but her shirt was ripped in a rather conspicuous location. I opened the window and tossed her the car keys so she could retrieve something more appropriate from our suitcase which was still out in the car. The trees around the perimeter of the lot would prevent any neighbors from seeing her jump.

"Bella? Edward? You guys up here?" _Are they hiding? Their car is still here and they knew we'd get here around midnight..._

Jake walked into the room less than half a second after Bella had jumped out the window. I had just finished smoothing out the bedspread and sheets and had turned to face the door as he walked in.

He took one look at me and snorted. "Sorry if we're interrupting something." _Bloodsuckers got caught! _The snorts quickly changed to guffaws and then he was howling with laughter. _He looks ridiculous. What did Bella do to his hair? Do I even want to know? Where is Bella, anyway? Maybe she's naked hiding under the bed... or not... he can probably hear me if she's not in here...think about something else...didn't want to think about that anyway...the drive here in the Aston Martin was awesome...oh, the hair is priceless, I wish I had a camera..._

I looked at myself through his eyes and realized that not only was my hair more disheveled than normal - and was curiously parted down the middle - but my shirt was on wrong-side out.

Renesmee walked in just in time to see me pull my shirt off and put it back on the right way.

_Huh? What's so funny? What's Dad doing with his shirt? Why is his hair like that? Why is Jake laughing so hard? Ohhhh... _She blushed furiously. "Where's Mom?" _Why is the window open?_

"She needed to get something we left in the car. She'll be right back in." I closed the window and ran my hands through my hair in an effort to transform it into a more stylish and respectable-looking mess.

Bella walked back into the room carrying our suitcase, looking considerably more put together than me. She had even managed to brush her hair. Jacob's and Renesmee's minds went silent as Bella's shield expanded to encompass them.

"How was your drive here?" Bella asked them with a too-innocent smile, as she set down the suitcase and gave Renesmee a hug.

"It was great," Nessie answered. "We made better time than I thought we would. Sorry we got here earlier than you were expecting."

"Only fifteen minutes," I told her, glancing at my watch. "Any time would have been fine. We weren't watching the clock." Obviously.

"Can you give us the quick tour?" Nessie was truly excited about seeing the house, but I knew she was also desperate to change the subject away from anything that would remind her of what she and Jake nearly interrupted, I felt bad that we had embarrassed her, but we are all adults and these situations are going to happen occasionally.

"Sure. I guess we can start right here. This was my room when I was growing up." She blushed some more but looked around to see the items on the bookshelf and the desk. "I don't have any personal items still here, except what you see sitting out - I took everything else with me when I left Chicago. Let me show you around downstairs next," I suggested, "and we can end back upstairs at my parents' room - that's where the pictures are. You'll probably want to spend more time in there."

We all went downstairs. Bella told them about my human musical composition, and I promised to play it for them the next day.

Bella told them about the china in the dining room and I told them about how my family always ate our evening meal there together. Nessie didn't seem to find the china nearly as interesting as Bella had. This made sense, though, since Nessie never had much interest in anything relating to human food.

Next we went into the kitchen and I repeated for them what I had told Bella about that room.

I started to head back upstairs but Bella directed us all to Father's office and proudly showed them the handmade cards I had created as a young child. Renesmee seemed intrigued, but perplexed about my attempts at artwork. I didn't comment; no need to draw additional attention to the subject.

We finally made it up to my parents' room, and we showed them the pictures we had selected for tonight - the five framed ones, the one of me with my dog, the best ones of my grandparents and other ancestors, and a sampling of myself at different ages. I explained each of the pictures to the best of my ability, and began offering the condensed version for the last several since I had noticed both Nessie and Jake yawning.

"This is all really interesting," Jake told us when we got to the last picture, "but I think we'd better be going. Where is this hotel you wanted us to stay in?"

"I programmed the address in your GPS already - you can just select it from the list. It should be the only Chicago address in there besides this house."

"I hope you didn't go overboard," he said. "You better not have gotten us a penthouse suite or anything."

"Your room is already paid for and it's nonrefundable, so don't try to downgrade. You might as well enjoy it."

"Jake, let's not argue with them. I'm so tired I don't care where we sleep." Nessie yawned again.

"You can stay here instead if you want," Bella offered. "There's a guest room down the hall - Alice put fresh sheets on all the beds yesterday. We just reserved the hotel room for you because we thought you might like some privacy but if you're too tired to drive you can definitely stay here."

"No, Mom, if you've already paid for it we might as well use it. Besides, you guys could probably use some privacy as well." She blushed again, and Jake shook with laughter once more. Renesmee reminded me more of Bella when she blushed than at any other time. I missed Bella's blush almost as much as I missed her sleeptalking.

"How early do you want us here in the morning?" Jake asked.

"No certain time," I told him. "You two sleep in. You should probably allow time to get some breakfast before you come over - we don't have any food here."

"Okay, how does eleven o'clock sound?"

"That will be fine." I took Bella's hand as we followed them down the stairs to the front door.

"See you tomorrow. Eleven o'clock." Jake put his arm around Nessie as they turned to leave, and he looked back at me over his shoulder. "You two can go back to whatever you were doing before we got here." He chuckled as they walked to their car.

Dare I hope?

I could tell precisely when Bella unshielded them - it was shortly after they started backing down the drive.

_... can't believe they didn't hear us coming. That was so embarrassing! I know they're married, but... Gross! They're my parents! I didn't need to see the after-effects...I guess I know which picture Mom was thinking of when she was playing with his hair. Ugh... And the underwear under the bed...I __know__ that hasn't been there since 1918..._ She saw that? _I don't even want to think about why Mom had to go get new clothes..._

_We'll be knocking first next time. Wonder what this hotel room is like. I can't wait to relax with Nessie and ... _He started to undress her in his mind, then caught himself before I had time to try to adequately block him. _Sorry, Edward. _He replaced the image with one of me with my messed-up hair and shirt wrong-side out. I could hear him laughing until they were out of my hearing range.

I closed the front door and followed Bella back up the stairs to my room.

"Why was Jake laughing so hard earlier? What was he thinking?" We sat back down on my bed and she leaned against me as I put my arm back around her.

"He found my retro hairstyle amusing and he noticed my shirt was wrong-side out. It was fairly obvious that he nearly interrupted us, and he was getting a kick out of it because he assumed I was embarrassed."

"You weren't?"

"Maybe a little about the shirt because that was my fault. I have to admit, though, the hair was pretty comical."

"I'm sorry, Edward," she laughed. "I forgot all about your hair. I guess Nessie noticed too?"

"Yes, she came in just in time to see me putting my shirt back on and fixing my hair. She noticed our underwear under the bed, too."

"Oh no! I know we've been interrupted by most of our family members at some point, but it's a little different with Nessie being our daughter. She must be so embarrassed."

"She was, a little. But we're all adults now, Bella. They can handle it. These things are going to happen from time to time. Please try not to let it bother you too much. I do apologize, though."

"Why? It wasn't your fault. I didn't hear them come in either. Besides, we managed to get dressed before they saw us anyway."

I shook my head. "I should have heard their thoughts when they were still several blocks away. Normally I would have - Jake's are always so loud and vivid. I should have been paying more attention, especially knowing they were due to arrive at any time. I was overconfident." And completely blissed out. I softened my expression into a sly grin. "I guess you can take a _little_ of the blame though. You were the one who had me so thoroughly distracted."

How I wished she would resume where she left off. Maybe I could suggest it, since we had been interrupted? _No, Cullen, don't be selfish, you promised yourself. Respect her privacy._

"So, where were we, exactly?" Her hands slid purposefully up my chest beneath my shirt, and the shirt was once again on the floor.

"I think it was my turn to admire _you_ for a while." I managed not to rip any of her clothing this time.

"Do I get to hear your thoughts too?"

"I wish I could do that for you, love. You have _no_ idea..."

"You _could_ do it," she insisted. "Just say whatever you're thinking while you're touching me - no editing." She smiled, daring me to do as she had asked.

An interesting idea. "I'll try, but I don't think I can translate everything into words. So much of what I hear in your mind is nonverbal...the feelings and sensations and images..." Even so, would I be able to I meet her challenge even in regard to my conscious, verbal thoughts? Could I really share without editing? The magnitude of the gift she bestowed on me whenever she shared her mind hit me again. Though it wasn't often she opened her mind to me, she still shared more of her unedited thoughts with me than I did with her. I would try to do this for her.

"But you can't hear feelings."

"No, of course I can't actually sense them like Jasper, but to the extent that you are aware of your feelings, or contemplating your emotions - I can hear them in your thoughts. But what I'm trying to explain is that no matter how sincerely I share my unedited thoughts verbally, you will be missing a lot of what I experience when you open your mind to me. I wish there was some way I could do for you what you have done for me."

"But you'll give this a try?"

"Yes." I gave her a mischievous grin. "You have to hold perfectly still, though, and not make a sound. If I lose concentration my 'shield' will slip back into place and you won't be able to hear me."

"I can do that." She immediately relaxed into a level of stillness achievable only by those of our kind, but kept her eyes fixed on mine.

I leaned over her, struck once again by the beauty and splendor of my wife, and kissed her neck reverently as I tried to mentally prepare myself to translate my upcoming thoughts into spoken words. I was determined to give her an experience as close to what she gave me as possible.

I spoke at vampire speed, my voice still unable to keep pace with my thoughts, and futilely attempted to adequately describe how she affected me.

The beauty of what my eyes saw when they gazed upon her face, her body.

The effects the amazing scent which was uniquely hers had on me.

How I could hear her breathing changing in response to my touch, and how I rejoiced that I, and only I, could have that effect on her.

The sensation of her skin against my fingertips, against the palm of my hand. So smooth. So soft. So warm. So _mine_.

I spoke of my love for her and how it continues to grow impossibly stronger day after day.

I interspersed all of these thoughts with descriptions of the memories that were triggered as I looked at her. Human Bella asleep, tangled in her sheets, her hair fanned out over the pillow just as it was now. Her face so full of joy as she walked down the aisle to me at our wedding. Her body, the first time I saw it after her transformation, and my amazement that perfection had somehow been slightly improved. The way her lips looked right before I kissed her for the first time.

I wanted to kiss her now - _really_ kiss her - but that would end the current verbal exercise. Of course, those thoughts, as well as descriptions of some the other desires that had been building within me, began to spill forth in verbal form. As my thumb grazed her lower lip, she lost control, unable to continue remaining still and unresponsive. Her hands quickly caressed their way up my arms and settled on my neck, the fingers of one hand entwining with my hair as she pulled my mouth down to hers.

* * *

The sun began filtering in through the window, announcing the beginning of a new day. Patterns of sunlight danced around on the hardwood floor, an effect resulting from the trees outside swaying in the gentle wind.

"Do we have to get up now?" Bella murmured, her lips brushing against my chest as she spoke.

"We don't have to, but if we delay, we may find ourselves still here in bed when Jake and Nessie arrive in about four hours." I ran my hands slowly up and down her back. I wasn't in any hurry to move either, though I knew we probably should.

"You're right. I lose all track of time when we're together like this. We don't need to get caught twice in one night." She kissed my chest and then rolled off of me onto the bed but still did not get up. She reached up and ran her hands through my hair as if trying to style it.

"How does it look?"

"What?"

"My hair. Have you created another new style for me?" I waited but she just stared at me sheepishly. I felt the top of my head and determined it was falling into a part in the middle again. "I think you must really like this style after all. Twice in one night?"

"Actually, Edward, I only fixed it once. I think we'll have to wash it to get it back to normal. It keeps falling back to the sides."

"Why? How did you get it to stay?"

"Venom." She bit her lower lip.

I arched one eyebrow. "You spit in my hair?"

"Sorry," she giggled. "Technically I didn't spit into it though. I just licked my fingers and then slicked it down. It didn't take much."

"Oh, that's much better," I teased. "Did Alice teach you this beauty trick?"

"No, I thought of it all on my own." She laughed a bit harder. "It worked, didn't it?"

"I think I'm going to go wash my hair." I gave her a quick kiss, then got up and rummaged through our suitcase until I found the shampoo.

"Does this house have a shower?" She looked surprised.

"No, but we've got a tub. The typical built-in tub with a shower nozzle like you had at Charlie's didn't become popular until after the war, but people did have to bathe even before that, you know."

* * *

After we had bathed and dressed, and my hair had been restored to a more modern state of disarray, we went downstairs to wait for Nessie and Jake.

I watched as Bella poked around in the kitchen, looking in drawers and cabinets, finding old but uninteresting kitchen items. She did come across Mother's recipe box, which we decided to take with us. Not that she or I would be able to enjoy any of the food resulting from following the recipes, but we might find something Nessie would eat, and Jake would no doubt reap the benefits of Bella's experimentation with the recipes. I wasn't sure there was any food that boy _didn't_ like.

Bella started examining the icebox. It was, of course, empty. I was glad Carlisle had thought to clean it out - I didn't even want to think about what a ninety-eight-year-old bottle of milk might smell like. Bella kept looking at the empty icebox, as if trying to figure something out. What was she thinking?

Finally, she looked over to me and voiced her confusion. "Is this a special type of cabinet? What was it used for? Is this a secret compartment at the top?"

Had she never seen an icebox before? No, she probably hadn't. She was born in 1987. Her Gran who grew up in a rural area probably stored their cold items in a cellar or spring, or simply did not store cold items, and her other grandparents likely had modern refrigerators which started becoming common in American homes in the 1930s and 1940s. I gave her a brief history of refrigeration, and demonstrated how the top lifted up so that a block of ice could be placed inside.

After we had exhausted exploration opportunities in the kitchen, Bella decided she wanted to listen to me play piano again, so we headed into the living room. I sat down at the piano, and Bella curled up in a chair to watch and listen. I played several pieces, losing myself in the music. I began Bella's lullaby and looked over to see her reaction. She had closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair as if the song were putting her to sleep. I smiled and continued watching her "sleep" as I finished the piece. As I started the next piece, Bella received a call from Renesmee letting us know they were on their way and would be here in a few minutes.

Not long after the phone call, I heard the car tear into the driveway and I cringed as I heard it skid to a stop behind the Ferrari. Jake was picturing me as I looked last night, and Nessie was mentally flipping through the old family pictures we had shown her. Was that really where their minds were, or were they trying to block me? Neither of their thoughts would have seemed out of place, but were both a bit too focused, as if trying not to let their minds wander elsewhere. They were probably trying to suppress their memories of their intimate time together at the hotel, which was more than fine with me. I was relieved when they walked in and Bella shielded them before any of those thoughts started slipping through.

"Did you sleep well?" Bella asked, directing the question to both of them.

"Yes, I feel much better now," Nessie replied, while Jake nodded in agreement. They did both look much more well-rested. They had really needed the sleep after the long drive here from Washington.

"Was the hotel all right?" I knew Jake didn't like me paying for things, but I wanted my daughter to be comfortable.

"You know it was more than all right, Edward. You didn't have to do that, we would have been fine with a regular room in a regular hotel." He grinned. "The hot tub in the room was kind of nice though."

Nessie blushed and I was glad I couldn't see the images in Jake's mind at that moment.

"I'm glad you managed to enjoy it," I told them. "Did you two have a chance to do any sightseeing this morning, or did you come straight over here?"

Nessie answered, "We went up in the Willis Tower. The view was amazing. Have you ever been up there, Dad?"

"No, I haven't. Maybe we could go tonight. I wonder how late it's open. You two might enjoy going again too - it would look different at night with all the city lights."

"What's the Willis Tower?" Bella asked.

"Sears Tower," we all answered at once.

"They renamed it about seven years ago," I explained. "A lot of people still don't recognize the new name, though."

"Yeah, I would have forgotten it had been renamed if I hadn't seen that brochure in the lobby," Jake added.

"So, Dad, are you going to play that song for us? The one you wrote when you were human?"

"Sure. I'll play the original human version first, then I'll play it a second time with the enhancements I made yesterday afternoon. This was dedicated to your grandmother Elizabeth."

I was nearing the end of enhanced version when some thoughts about a half-mile away caught my attention due to my old surname being mentioned.

_...Masen place. This should be interesting. _The neighbors were talking about my house?

I finished playing the piece while continuing to listen. The thoughts were getting closer. It didn't seem to be a neighbor, but someone driving. It seemed we were about to have a visitor.

_I wonder what teenagers would be doing there. They'd better not be vandalizing it. What I wouldn't give to see inside that old place._

I looked at his surroundings through his eyes and immediately recognized the inside of a police cruiser.

"We're about to have some company," I informed the others. "Apparently the police are responding to a report of teenagers hanging out around the Masen place." The cruiser pulled into the drive just as I finished speaking.

"Is your house famous?" Jake asked. "People know it by name? 'The Masen Place'? Wouldn't everyone who knew your family be dead by now?"

"Yes, that does seem odd," I concurred. "I don't know any reason that would be general knowledge."

_Nice cars. Looks like I'm dealing with filthy rich teenagers. Probably spoiled rotten and think they can get away with anything. Or those cars could be stolen... _He peeked into each car, unable to see much through the tinted windows, then circled the house verifying no one was outside, before knocking on the front door.

I opened the door and greeted the officer. He was nearly my height, average build, graying hair. He appeared to be in his mid to late fifties.

He identified himself as Officer Hoskins then got right down to business. "We've received a call about trespassing on this property. I know this house is normally vacant. Would you care to explain what business you have here?" _They look clean-cut and well-dressed. Cars probably aren't stolen if they can afford these designer clothes... Unless they're stolen too..._

"I'm the homeowner, sir." I explained. "I recently inherited this property from my grandmother, and my wife and I came to check it out. I'm Edward Cullen, this is my wife, Bella, my sister Renesmee Black, and her husband Jacob."

"I don't suppose you have any proof of ownership with you?"_ This kid looks familiar._

"I have a copy of the deed, showing my grandmother as the owner, and I have a copy of her will. Would you care to see those?" Why would I look familiar?

"Yes, please." _I hope he's not bluffing. Seems like a nice kid. Polite and respectful._

"They're upstairs. I'll be right back." I took the steps at a human pace, retrieved the documents from our suitcase, and returned to hand them to the officer, thankful for my thoroughness in preparing a legal paper trail.

He looked over the documents with great interest and wondered why my grandmother's will had left everything to me with no mention of my sister who was here with me. He was convinced of the authenticity of the deed once he saw that the property had been transferred to my "grandmother" by the estate of Edward Anthony Masen, Jr., as he knew the house as the "Masen place." He wondered briefly why Fred had never found this document at the courthouse. What? Who was this 'Fred' and why would he be so interested in my house? I knew the deed was filed in the courthouse so this 'Fred' must not have put much effort into looking. The officer seemed interested in learning the year it was transferred, 1970. I had faked the death of my human self that year and transferred all of my real estate and financial holdings to various aliases - the house had been transferred to one of Esme's aliases so that she could appear at the courthouse and pose as the daughter of the deceased and sign documents. I hadn't wanted to risk appearing as a descendant myself, on the off chance that someone who had known me as a human might have been there and recognized me.

"Can I see some identification?" _This kid appears to have everything in order but I'd better check his ID._

"Yes, sir." I pulled out my wallet and handed him my driver's license.

_Hmmm... Address is New Hampshire but they had Washington State plates on the cars...Twenty-two, I guess he is old enough to be married... _"So are you a descendant of the Masens who lived here in the early nineteen hundreds?" _That's why he looks familiar. He looks a lot like the kid in that picture Granny showed me. _I was stunned when one of the pictures we had found in Mother's box last night flashed into this man's head. It was one of the pictures made at a dance, of me standing with a young woman. In the officer's mind, the face of the young woman was clear but my face was a bit fuzzy as he was having trouble recalling the details.

"Yes, sir. My grandmother told me about them. It was her grandparents and father who lived here originally. Her grandparents died in the Spanish Influenza epidemic, and her father left Chicago shortly thereafter. He never sold the house, and it's remained in the family all these years."

_Fred would love to meet these people. I wonder if they would be willing to talk to him. _"Look, I'm going to admit something to you. I responded to this call because I've always been curious about this house. I lived in this neighborhood with my grandparents when I was a kid and never saw anyone come to this house other than the men who would show up to do yard work." He paused. "My grandmother told me a story about the young man who used to live here when she was a teenager. Would you care to hear it?"

I suspected the story was related to the picture, and I had no memory whatsoever of the girl, who was apparently this man's grandmother. It made sense that my parents might have invited a neighbor to accompany us to one of the functions we attended. As confident as I was that I never had a girlfriend as a human, and never had feelings for this girl, my memories were frighteningly blank in many regards, and who knew what this girl's perspective may have been. I hoped I was not about to embarrass myself or invite a story that would cause Bella to feel jealous, but I could hardly decline the man's offer to share a story without seeming rude.

"Certainly, would you like to have a seat?" I gestured to an empty chair, and he sat down. I sat in another chair, and Bella, Nessie, and Jake were still on the sofa where they had been sitting when I was playing the piano.

"Well, my grandmother lived in this neighborhood since she was a young girl. Their house was three houses down from this one. She found the young man who lived here - your great-grandfather I presume - to be quite charming. They played together some as young children, but as they got older she rarely saw him because they became busy with different activities, as gender roles dictated back then. She was a year younger than him, and didn't have any classes with him in school. She would wave at him when she walked by and saw him in the yard, and he would smile and wave back, but that was about the extent of their relationship.

"So she had to admire him from afar. She had heard that he was planning to join the army upon turning eighteen, and she worried endlessly that something would happen to him. She daydreamed about him falling in love with her and deciding to stay with her instead of going to war, but she was rather shy and couldn't think of any way to get his attention. Well, imagine her excitement when his mother came over one day and invited her family to a party being held to welcome some visiting relatives!

"She was thrilled that she would have an opportunity to see him in a social situation. Her parents bought her a special dress for the occasion and she had a fabulous time. She had been trying to work up the nerve to go speak with him when he came over and asked her to dance. He was an excellent dancer, and very polite, a perfect gentleman. She had been very nervous but he was so charming he made her feel completely at ease. She was even more smitten after the dance than she had been before. She hoped he would call on her again soon, but not long after that, his father became ill and died, and then his mother. She worried that he might have died in the epidemic also, but another neighbor told her that he had left town with his uncle. She was heartbroken as she slowly realized he wasn't returning. She eventually married my grandfather, but I know a piece of her heart was always with the young man who had lived here in this house. She had a photograph as a souvenir from the dance, and she treasured that picture. She showed it to me several times, and I always wondered what became of that young man."

I kept glancing over at Bella throughout the story, wondering what she was thinking. She seemed to be trying not to smile at inappropriate places in the story. I wished I was sitting there with her on the sofa, instead of across from her in this chair.

"That was very interesting, Officer Hoskins," Bella told him. "Thank you for sharing that story! How romantic, but sad. So do you think his great-grandfather would have returned her affections if he hadn't had to leave?"

"Well my grandmother liked to imagine that he did, but surely he would have contacted her again if that were the case. Her story always intrigued me when I was a young man, and it was more mysterious because the house remained unoccupied but was always kept up. Every time I drive down this street I'm reminded of that story." He turned to me. "I don't suppose your family has handed down any stories about my grandmother?"

"No, sir, nothing I can recall. That would have been before my grandmother was born, so she wouldn't have known your grandmother."

"We did find some pictures here yesterday that appear to have been from dances," Bella volunteered, "but we didn't know who any of the girls were." What was she doing? Now the officer would want to see the pictures, and he might find the resemblance to my current appearance a little too uncanny.

"Really?" He asked excitedly. "Would you mind showing them to me? One of them might be the same one my grandmother had."

"Sure! I'll be right back." Bella took off for the bedroom and returned with the seven dance pictures.

She handed them to the police officer. She had apparently sorted them from youngest to oldest, so the last picture was the one where I was seventeen. Of course, it was the same picture.

"This is it!" He exclaimed. He looked from the picture to me several times. "You bear an amazing resemblance to your great-grandfather."

"Yes, my grandmother always told me that. I don't seem to have gotten many genes from my mother's side of the family."

"Your great-grandfather had green eyes, though. She always talked about his 'amazing green eyes.'"

"You wouldn't happen to know who any of the other girls were, would you?" Bella asked.

He flipped through them again. "No, I'm afraid not. That was very much before my time. I don't think my grandmother had any pictures of these other girls, or at least I don't remember ever seeing any. He did take quite a few girls to the dances, didn't he? I wonder if each of those other girls was as heartbroken as my grandmother."

Bella smiled and I could tell she was barely holding back a laugh. "If he was anything like my husband, I can almost guarantee they were."

He smiled at her sappiness and rose from his chair, handing the pictures back to her. "I'd better be going - I _am_ on duty right now. I didn't intend to hold you kids up so long. Look, my brother Fred is into genealogy and has traced our family back pretty far. He tells me that we're related to the Masens, way back, I'm not sure exactly how. Of course my grandmother never knew that...she was probably in love with her cousin." He laughed. "But Fred knows where the Masens are buried. He could probably take you to see the cemetery, if you're interested."

I decided it might be interesting to meet Fred. He probably knew more about my ancestry than I did. Bella had been very interested in old photos we had found yesterday and had mentioned possibly wanting to research the family tree. However, it was sunny today, and the sun would not set until 7:25pm, and I wanted to have some time alone at my parents' graves before Fred would arrive, effectively forcing me to pretend my parents were ancestors I'd never met.

"Actually, we already had plans to go to the cemetery. I visited it once before with my grandmother so I know where it is. I wanted to show my sister because she's never been there. We have some other things planned for today too, though - it will probably be around 8pm before we get there. Would that be too late for him to meet us?"

"Probably not. I'm sure he'll be eager to meet you. I'm not sure what his plans for today are but I'll give him a call and let him know he can meet you there then if he is able to." He pulled out a notepad and scribbled down a phone number, then tore out the sheet and handed it to me. "Here's Fred's number in case he can't meet you tonight, in case you ever want to call him and discuss genealogy. I'll warn you though, he'll talk your ear off if you let him." He moved closer to the door, so I opened it for him.

"Thank you for stopping to check on the house. It's good to know someone's watching out for it."

He stepped out onto the front porch, then turned back to ask another question. "Will you kids be moving here? It will seem odd to see the house occupied."

"No, we're in the process of moving into a house in New Hampshire. I don't have any plans to sell this one, though. It's been in the family for over a hundred years - we have a lot of history here."

"Well, it was nice to meet you, Mr. Cullen."

"Have a good day, sir."

I went back into the house as he returned to his cruiser.

_Must be nice to have enough money to hang onto an extra house purely for its historical value. Nice kids though. I wish Granny was still alive so she could have met Edward Masen's great-grandson. Probably for the best that she can't, though - Cullen and his great-grandfather could have been twins and I'm not sure how she would have reacted to see someone who looks so much like the boy she loved. I bet this Cullen kid's broken a few hearts in his short life already. His wife seemed sweet. The other two sure were quiet. _Now there was a word rarely used to describe Jake, but he obviously had little to contribute to any discussion of my personal family history. _Oh, I need to call Fred. _He did call Fred, and just as he was getting out of range of my hearing, I heard him thinking it was great that Fred would be able to meet us.

"Could I see those pictures?" Nessie asked.

"Of course." Bella handed them to her, and she flipped through them with Jake peering over her shoulder.

"You were quite the ladies' man, weren't you Edward?" Jake was apparently finished being quiet. "Pictures with seven different girls? So do you remember this guy's grandmother? Was she hot?"

"Well you can see the picture and judge for yourself, Jacob. But 'hot' was not a word we used back then to describe a lady."

"You still don't remember his grandmother, even after that story?" Bella asked.

"No, love, I don't. I have no memory of attending a dance with her - I remember I went to these social functions with my parents and they often matched me up with a dance partner, and I was expected to dance with guests whenever they hosted a party, but I don't remember anyone specifically. In hindsight, a hundred years later, I'm beginning to realize my mother was probably using these dances to try to match me up with a girl who might distract me from becoming a soldier. But I was clueless. I just went to the dances as they asked, and danced with whomever they expected me to."

"I bet that's why your mom left those dance pictures on top of the others in the box!" Bella laughed. "She was hoping you would review your options and go propose to one of them!"

"The sad thing is that's probably not far from the truth," I admitted. "I was kind of thinking the same thing. She seemed to have arranged things in that box in the order she wanted me to find them."

"Who were the visiting relatives Officer Hoskins mentioned?" Bella asked, seeming to suddenly remember the question she couldn't ask while the police officer was here. "He said your parents were having a party in honor of visiting relatives."

"I don't know." I shook my head. "I'm sorry - my human memories are so faded. I don't remember any relatives other than my parents. Apparently I had some relatives, but I have no idea who they were." I wished I could remember more of my human life. Bella had so many questions and I was able to answer so few of them. "If there was a party due to them visiting, they must not have lived close by. I probably didn't know them very well."

"So do you have more pictures I didn't see last night?" Nessie asked.

"Yes, there are quite a few more still in the box upstairs. Your mother and I had selected what we thought were the best ones for your 'quick tour' last night, and we thought you could look through the rest today."

I went upstairs to get the box and brought it down to her, and she and Jake looked through the rest of the pictures and newspaper clippings, and read the letter my father had written to my mother.

We ordered pizzas for Jake and sat around talking and planning while he ate. We decided we would leave around 6pm, drive around for a bit so I could point out where the hospital Carlisle found me in used to be, and where the school I attended was located. We would get to the cemetery at sunset, spend up to an hour talking with Fred, then go to Willis Tower in time for the last trip of the day up to the Sky Deck, which meant we would need to get there before 9:30pm. We would leave for Hanover around 10pm, and should be able to make it to our new home within about five and a half hours, arriving around 4:30am Eastern time.

"If you all don't mind, I think I'll take a nap now since I'll be driving most of the night." Jake stuffed the last bite of pizza in his mouth and stacked up the empty boxes.

"No problem," Bella told him. "Would you like to use the guest room?"

"No offense, but that bed looked rather small. I think I'll just stretch out here in the floor." It didn't take Jake long to get comfortable in the floor, and Nessie snuggled up next to him, with his arm as her pillow. They were both asleep within five minutes. Jacob would snore occasionally and I could hear Renesmee's steady delicate breaths.

"We probably shouldn't sit here and stare at them," Bella reminded me. "They wouldn't like it."

"I know, but they just look so peaceful. I would give almost anything to be able to do that again, to be able to just shut everything off for a few hours. What about you - do you miss sleep?"

"Honestly, no," she told me. "There have been a few times I thought it might be nice, but why would I want to waste time sleeping when I could have a night like last night, with you?"

I smiled, remembering the previous night. It probably qualified as one of the best, even with the interruption. "Oh, I wouldn't want to waste our nights sleeping either, but an occasional afternoon nap would be really nice. We could cuddle up together like they are, and dream about each other."

"We can still cuddle and dream." She snuggled up closer to me on the sofa.

I wrapped my arm around her and rearranged us so that we were lying on the sofa facing one another, with her head resting on my upper arm. My feet hung off the end of the sofa, and her legs tangled with mine. I kissed the top of her head and smoothed her hair back away from her face, then draped my free arm around her waist. The loudest sounds in the room were Jake's and Nessie's hearts beating together, hers faster than his, creating a rhythm uniquely theirs. I could recall Bella's human heartbeat perfectly in my mind, and I focused on the memory for a few moments. I looked over at my daughter, sleeping soundly in her husband's arms, and tried to imagine how it would feel to sleep. I began to softly hum Bella's lullaby, and knew without looking the smile that would be on her face, and how that smile used to relax as she drifted off into slumber.

"I wonder what they would think if they woke up and found us both asleep here." Bella's voice seemed unexpectedly loud in the silence that had come over the house.

"They would know we were faking."

"There's usually a certain amount of confusion when someone first wakes up. They might be disoriented enough to forget we can't sleep, at least for a few seconds."

"You really want to try it? You're in a goofy mood today, aren't you? Spitting in my hair and now wanting to play possum..."

She giggled. "Technically, the hair was yesterday. That was before midnight."

"Yes, but the effects lasted until this morning after sunrise."

She giggled some more. "I'm pretty comfortable here. I think I might really fall asleep. Especially if you hum my lullaby again."

I started humming. She snuggled a little closer and tried to modulate her breathing to sound as though she were asleep. She never was a good actress when it came to pretending to be asleep, but it might be enough to fool anyone other than me, or at least anyone who didn't know she was a vampire. When I finished the lullaby, I listened to Nessie and Jake a while longer, and matched my breathing pattern to his, minus the occasional snores. Then I decided I probably never breathed that loudly as a human, and toned it down a bit. It really was quite relaxing, snuggled up here with my wife, and my daughter sleeping safely within my sight.

I was beginning to wonder whether we might need to wake them up, as it was nearly time for us to leave, when Jacob let out a particularly loud snore and Renesmee groaned and flipped over on her other side, managing to elbow him in the jaw in the process. He sat up, looking confused, and then she sat up as well. I closed my eyes to play along with Bella's little game. I heard them stand up, and Jake yawned and stretched.

I was wondering what they were thinking and wishing Bella didn't have them shielded, when she must have had the same thought. Their thoughts hit me suddenly.

_...still sleepy...wonder what time it is... Oh, how cute. Are Mom and Dad napping too? I don't think I've ever seen them like that. So peaceful. Wait a minute...they don't sleep. Is something wrong with them? Are they pretending?_

_...don't know how I was sleeping with that smell. My jaw hurts. Huh? Were those two making out on the couch while we were napping? Why are they so still? They look like they're asleep. They must be faking so we wouldn't catch them again. Did they really think we'd buy that? I think I'll go get a bucket of water to throw on them...that'll wake 'em up!_

"That won't be necessary, Jake."

"What are you guys doing?" _As if I didn't know._

"Sleeping," Bella and I answered together. She giggled and sat up, so I shifted so that I was sitting next to her. Her shield went back up around Jake and Nessie again.

"You really looked like it, but why were you pretending to be asleep?" Nessie asked, confused.

"You two just looked so peaceful and relaxed all snuggled up together, we decided to give it a try," I told them.

"What won't be necessary?" Bella asked.

Jake laughed. "I was thinking about throwing some water in his face."

"Just me? I think you had plans for Bella too."

"So did either of you think we were asleep, even for a second?" Bella asked.

"No, I figured you were making out." Jake chuckled.

"Not really," Nessie claimed.

"You did for a couple seconds," I told her. "You were a bit disoriented when you first woke up. You thought we were cute and peaceful."

"What happened to our shield?" Nessie looked a bit annoyed.

"It was only down for about 5 seconds," I told her. "Your mother was just amusing herself with a little experiment. Are you all ready to go now?"

We recovered the furniture and gathered up the pictures and other items we had decided to take with us, and I got the suitcase and carried everything out to the car, grateful again for the trees that provided enough shade for me to be able to walk from the house to the car on this sunny day. I armed the security system and locked up the house and we were on our way.

As we were driving, I pointed out where I had attended school. There was still a school in that location but the original building had been torn down and a new one built in its place, so there was no need for us to stop and go in. I also pointed out the location of the hospital where my parents had died and where Carlisle had found me. Similarly, there was no point in getting out and looking around because the structure had long since been torn down and there was now a shopping center in its place. I considered looking for the apartment where Carlisle had lived, where my transformation had taken place, but we were short on time and it was doubtful that it was still standing either - it was not a new building even when he lived there. We stopped by the florist and picked up the flowers I had called in an order for the previous day.

I was pleased when we arrived at the cemetery at exactly 7:25pm. Twilight, the best time of the day. I was no longer trapped by the sun, there was still some natural light available, and I hadn't wasted a minute of it in traffic.

The Aston Martin pulled in behind us and Jacob started to get out when I heard Renesmee stop him.

"Jake, honey, give Dad a few minutes alone. These were his parents and he hasn't been here in a long time."

"Right, sorry." He sat back down closed the car door.

I hadn't intended to make them wait on us but decided I appreciated the gesture. Jake was like a brother to me, in a way, but my parents were not his.

"Want a minute alone first?" Bella asked.

"I want you with me," I insisted. "I always want you with me."

We got out and she reached for my hand, which I quickly accepted, linking our fingers together. We walked directly over to my parents' graves, which were near the fence at the edge of the cemetery, over a slight hill just out of sight of our cars. I placed the flowers on the graves, and we stood there for a moment in silence.

"Did you attend a funeral for your father?" Bella asked gently. "I know you couldn't have with your mother..."

"Yes. Mother made sure he had a proper funeral. Many people didn't, in the chaos of the epidemic. I don't remember any relatives attending. Seems like his parents should have been there if they were still living then. I know some of his business associates were there, and some people from the church but mostly it's just a blur in my memory. The only part I really remember is standing here at the grave with Mother, holding her while she cried." I paused, thinking of what she had said in her letter to me. "I wish she could have had a proper funeral too. Carlisle made sure she would be buried with my father but he had to let others take care of the details because he busy watching over me during my transformation. I wanted him to bring me to the cemetery before we left Chicago but he said there was too much of a risk that humans would be around, even late at night - gravediggers were working around the clock with so many people dying. Fifteen years passed before I even visited her grave for the first time."

I squeezed her hand, feeling grateful for her presence, and wanting her to know how much I appreciated her being here with me. She returned the gesture, then released my hand in favor of giving me a full embrace. We stood there for a couple minutes, while I stared at my parent's graves with my wife's comforting arms around me, then I remembered Jacob and Renesmee were still waiting in their car.

"Jake, Ness, come join us." I called out just slightly above normal voice level, knowing they would hear even from inside their car.

They showed up a few seconds later and added some more flowers to the graves.

After a few minutes, Nessie started walking around, reading the names on nearby stones. "Do we have any other family buried here?" she asked.

"None that I know of," I told her, "but if Fred shows up he may know more than I do."

About fifteen minutes later, Fred arrived, He looked much like Officer Hoskins, but probably two or three years older. As he approached, his mind was running through a list of names and dates, rechecking his calculations on what relation I would be to him. Apparently our closest common ancestors were the couple in the very oldest picture I had found in the box, my great-great grandparents. He decided we were fifth cousins once removed. Adjusting for the generations I had fabricated - taking into consideration that I was the man he thought to be my great-grandfather - that would make our true relationship third cousins twice removed. A pretty distant relation no matter how you looked at it.

"Chuck was right, you really do look like Edward Junior!" He said this as if he were speaking of someone he had known for years. "I'm your cousin Fred." He extended his hand for a handshake.

"Edward Cullen," I replied, shaking his hand briefly.

I introduced the others, and he excitedly launched into an explanation of how we were related to one another - how his family was connected to the Masens, and how many generations back the common ancestors were for each of us. He asked how far back I had traced my line, and I explained that I had not done any intentional research but had stumbled across the pictures which were conveniently labeled with names and relationship to my great-grandfather. He obviously already had the information on their names, and I knew he had already seen a picture of me as a human, so I saw no harm in letting him know about the pictures. As I expected, his eyes lit up at the mention of them, and he made no attempt to contain his excitement at the idea of getting his hands on a copy of the photo of the couple who were our common ancestors. I promised to scan it and email it to him.

He pulled a large three-ring binder out of the backpack he was carrying, and began showing us photocopies of census images, marriage licenses, deeds, and wills, and photos of gravestones, and promised to email me a file with all the information he had compiled about the family. Nessie seemed even more interested in this new information on the family than Bella did. This made sense, considering they were Nessie's direct ancestors. She asked him questions on how he found all the information, and what the next steps would be to trace further back.

He asked questions about my great-grandfather and my grandmother, and I tried to stick to "facts" that could be substantiated by the fake paper trail we left for them, like their deaths in 1970 and 2015, and also added in some tidbits he would have to take my word for, such as my claim that I spent a week with my grandmother each year when I was growing up.

He was addressing questions to both Nessie and me, but she was deferring to me to answer though I knew she was fully versed in our public story for her role as my sister. We had concocted a fair amount of detail to fit what we had told Renée about Renesmee - both of us being raised by different adoptive families, and my financial security being a result of my inheritance from my biological parents - with the story we had prepared for Hanover to explain, to anyone who might ask, why my sister was significantly less financially secure than I was.

Fred noticed Renesmee's silence and wondered whether she was older than me and might remember more, and wished I would give her a chance to talk. He was also wondering why she wasn't mentioned in the will but assumed that would be a sensitive topic and did not want to bring it up directly.

"Renesmee, you're older than Edward, right? What do you remember about your grandmother?"

She laughed. "Actually he's four years older. I'm only eighteen." Fred realized he had just put his foot in his mouth by making an age-related remark to a lady and not erring on the side of caution. He started to stutter out an apology but Nessie continued, "That's okay, we get that a lot. I guess Edward looks a bit young for his age." She smirked at me. "I don't mind people assuming I'm the older sibling but it makes it harder for him to play the role of the overprotective big brother when people assume he's younger than me." She laughed again.

It always seems odd to me hearing her refer to me by my first name, but she was playing the role of little sister quite well. Of course, everything Nessie did, she did well.

"I still apologize, I shouldn't have assumed..." he paused, then returned to his original line of questioning. "Is there anything you can share about your grandmother? Did you visit her every year too?" _Maybe she didn't visit enough and the grandmother wrote her out of the will._

"I only met her once," Renesmee began, "and she had Alzheimer's then, so I never really knew her when she was herself. I should explain, Edward and I were raised by different adoptive families, and I didn't find him until three years ago. Our biological parents died in a traffic accident in 1999, when he was five and I was one. Our biological grandmother, the one you're asking about, was our only close relative and she was unable to care for us due to her own health concerns, so we were placed for adoption. Edward's new family honored our grandmother's wishes to be allowed to maintain contact, and mine didn't. I think Mom was worried they might lose me to her someday. My parents divorced when I was twelve, and Mom died of cancer four years ago so I went to live with Dad and he let me see my adoption records. It took me a year to find my grandmother - she was in a nursing home. Dad took me to visit her there, but of course she didn't know who I was, and the staff wouldn't give me any information due to HIPPA laws, but they let me leave a message for Edward and he contacted me the next day."

"I couldn't believe I'd gotten my baby sister back!" I interjected, giving her shoulder a squeeze, and smiling widely.

"So that's why I wasn't in our grandmother's will - I'm sure you must have been wondering about that. She hadn't seen me since I was a baby, didn't know where I was, and never expected to regain contact. When she died last year, Edward offered to split her estate with me, but I didn't track them down because I was after the family fortune - I was just happy to find out I had a brother."

_What an amazing young lady. Most people would go after the money. She must be doing okay on her own though, if one of those cars back there is hers. _"Well I'm certainly glad you found him. That was an amazing story!"

I looked at my watch and realized we needed to leave soon if we wanted to make it in time to go up in the Willis Tower. I let Fred know we needed to be going, and exchanged email addresses with him. He reminded me of his eagerness to see the picture I had told him about, thanked us for agreeing to meet with him, and went on his way, reviewing all the new information we had given him in his mind. I would have to make arrangements soon to have a cemetery stone placed for my "grandmother" because he was sure to try to locate the cemetery and get a picture of it.

We made it to the Willis Tower just in time for the last elevator ride up. The city lights at night were impressive, and seemed to stretch on forever. Jake and Nessie were glad they had come back for the nighttime view. As we were returning to our cars I overheard Jake arguing with Nessie. I'm not sure why he even tried to whisper, since he knows vampire hearing is slightly superior to his and Nessie's.

"We should tell them before we leave," he was arguing.

Nessie placed her hand on his face, presenting her side of the argument, which I could not see since Bella was shielding them as usual.

"He's going to be more upset the longer we wait," he whispered in her ear, "and Bella won't be shielding us while we're driving and I don't want to have to worry about blocking him for the next five or six hours."

"You might as well tell me," I told them. "I can hear you anyway. Whatever it is, now is as good a time as any."

"Dad, promise you won't be mad at us for not saying something sooner. We didn't want to keep you from enjoying your time here in Chicago."

This sounded bad. What could they possibly be keeping from us? What could make me worry enough to prevent me from enjoying this trip? Something to provoke the interest of the Volturi? Could Renesmee be pregnant? Or maybe something completely different - had something happened to Billy? Or Charlie or Sue or one of the wolves? I looked over at Bella and she seemed as puzzled as me.

"I can't promise not to be upset but I think I can control myself. Just tell us."

Nessie pulled a small package from her purse and handed it to me. "We found this in our mailbox yesterday morning when we were leaving La Push."

It was from Italy.

I looked inside and found an exquisite bracelet of diamonds and sapphires. The stones were several carats each. More of the crown jewels, no doubt. I pulled out the accompanying note. It read, in elegant script,

_"Our belated congratulations to the new Mrs. Black."_

"This is what you were blocking from me this morning."

They both nodded.

"And why you were annoyed when you woke up from your nap unshielded."

"Dad, I didn't want you to spend your time here worrying. I know this was a special time for you and Mom and there wouldn't have been any benefit for you to have started worrying two days sooner. If we were in imminent danger of an attack, do you think they would have sent this as a warning?"

"It's just a little too similar to the note they sent me," Bella had a look of panic in her eyes.

I felt the anger gripping me. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. I realized I was pinching the bridge of my nose. Somehow that action seemed to help me direct my thoughts and regain control.

I was not angry with my daughter for preventing this news from overshadowing Bella's first visit to my Chicago home. I was not angry with Jake for going along with whatever his wife requested. I was angry at the situation. The constant unspoken threat the Volturi continued to hold over us. The impossibility of being fully prepared for whatever their next move might be. The uncertainty of when - or even if - they would make another attempt to destroy us. The fact that this communication had been sent to _my daughter_.

The primary intent of the message was clear. A tangible reminder that they have not forgotten us. A warning that they are still watching.

The attack could be tomorrow, or next year, or ten years from now, or a hundred years or a thousand. In that sense, this "gift" and its accompanying message meant nothing new. We already knew they would never forget, that they would always be watching. Nessie was right - this was not an indication that they were preparing to "visit" us in the near future. In fact, it was more likely they would wait long enough for us to become complacent. They would try to attack when it was least expected, or at a time when we would be distracted. They had no hope of defeating us without suffering significant losses of their own, unless we were caught off guard.

I forced my fingers from the bridge of my nose and ran my hand through my hair, forcing a calm expression to my face. Nessie was tense, waiting for my outburst. Jake stood with his arm protectively around her, no doubt ready to defend her decision to keep this from me regardless of his own feelings on that subject. Bella was clearly very disturbed by the news. I knew she must be remembering that when she received a similar gift from the Volturi, they arrived only weeks later.

Now that I was under control myself, I would try to reassure them.

"Bella, this isn't the same. Nessie's right, this doesn't mean they're coming any time soon. When they sent you your gift, they had no immediate plans to come after us. They were interested in confirming you had been changed, and they were waiting for an excuse to accuse us of wrongdoing, but without Irina's involvement it might have been years or decades before they came for us."

Her expression relaxed a little. "We can discuss it more in the car." She still wasn't calm, but truthfully, neither was I. I nodded. We would have to discuss this from every angle and determine if there was anything we should be doing differently to be better prepared.

"Ness, I'm not angry with you. I understand why you waited, and in a way, I'm glad you did. But if anything else happens, I want you to tell me immediately, no matter what. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Dad. I will. I promise. If anything else happens, it will worry me a lot more than just this one note has."

"Have you told any of the others about this?" I was thinking I needed to tell Carlisle, but did he already know?

"Just my pack, and Sam. They're running some extra patrols around La Push and Forks, but with all the Cullens in New England, I doubt the Italian bloodsuckers will be going to Washington." Jacob looked at his watch. "Are you guys ready to get going? We're cutting into my beauty sleep here."

I rolled my eyes but agreed we needed to go. "I'm ready."

"I know it might sound silly," Bella began, "but could you drive right behind us so I can shield you? I'll feel better if we can stay together and I can know for sure you're safe. And it will be good exercise for me to practice shielding a moving vehicle."

I knew it was wholly unnecessary, bordering on irrational, but I liked the idea. "Would you mind?" I asked them, directing my question mainly to Jake, who I suspected was hoping to race me to Hanover.

Jake hesitated, probably considering the small amount of extra speed he would be giving up to limit himself to the speed of the Ferrari, but he agreed. He always did what was best for Renesmee, and unnecessary though this probably was, it was ultimately true that she would always be safer when shielded.

We stopped for gasoline as we were leaving the city, and Jake stocked up on snacks for the ride.

Five and a half hours until we would arrive at our new home in Hanover.

* * *

**A/N: If you are interested in reading about Edward's dance with the neighbor girl from human Edward's perspective, check out "The Life and Death of Edward Anthony Masen" by javamomma0921: **

** www . fanfiction s/5670238/1/The_Life_and_Death_of_Edward_Anthony_Masen**

**The link is also in my Favorites list.  
**

**I am serving as a beta for this story, and it is fantastic! There is a focus on historical accuracy, it is consistent with canon, and I love her take on human Edward. The neighbor girl, Helen Kirkbride, is in chapter 5. I was excited that ****javamomma0921**** was able to work my neighbor girl into her story!** :)


	13. New Toy

Chapter 13: New Toy

**BPOV**

The four of us had spent the last few hours discussing the Volturi message from what seemed like every angle. The Aston Martin followed close enough behind us that we could hear each other at normal voice levels, and my shielding "muscles" had been getting a real workout, as Jake was not making much of an effort to keep a consistent amount of space between our cars.

We were not far from Hanover now, and the conversation had finally died down, each of us lost in our own thoughts. What it all boiled down to was that we don't know any more than we did before. What I found most disturbing, and what I knew Edward found most disturbing, was that they sent the message to our daughter. I knew it was really Edward, Alice, and me that they wanted. If they were simply curious about Renesmee's hybrid nature, they could just as easily study one of the Amazon hybrids. Did the Volturi see Renesmee as a pawn they could use to somehow coerce us into joining them? Did they disapprove of her marriage to a werewolf-shapeshifter? Were they hoping Renesmee would become pregnant so they could use the "threat of the unknown" to justify our destruction?

I looked over at Edward, who had his eyes on the road, but I knew his thoughts were far away, still turning over all the possibilities in his mind regarding what the message meant and what we should do about it. The extremely jovial mood he had been in the last couple days had been lost the second Nessie pulled the package from her purse.

It bothered me that she hadn't called us immediately when she received the package. Even if there was nothing useful we could have done with the information, we needed to be able to trust that she would keep us informed of such important developments. Next time - and I knew deep down that there _would_ be a 'next time' - the speed of our reaction could be critical to our survival. Our family was in this together - all of the Cullens and all of the wolves - and it was vital that we keep each other informed.

At the same time, a surprisingly large part of me was secretly glad that she delayed telling us until we were leaving Chicago. Nothing had happened to us during those two days, and there seemed to be little we could actually do in response to the information. If they had called us when they first received the package, while we were still en route to Chicago, we probably would have turned around and driven back to meet them, and escorted them directly to Hanover to meet with the rest of the family. We would have missed spending those two days at Edward's childhood home. Nessie had been right - it had been a very special trip for us and I was glad we hadn't missed out on it.

I thought back over the last couple days as I tried to push the current worry temporarily from my mind.

It had been so much fun looking through the pictures with Edward. I had always wondered what he had looked like as a human, and he was exactly as I had imagined - gorgeous and perfect. He did look younger, more like a real seventeen-year-old, without his vampiric musculature. I wondered what it might have been like if we could have known each other when we were both human - if I had been born in 1901. What would he have thought of me if I had been assigned as his dance partner at one of those dances? Most likely, he would have thought I was a total klutz who didn't know how to dance - there was no chance I would have impressed him with my dancing skills. Would he have been attracted to me anyway, or would he have been as oblivious to me as he was to those seven girls in the pictures? Would I have been enough to distract him from his dreams of going off to war?

I thought about Officer Hoskins' grandmother and her crush on Edward. I could imagine how ecstatic she would have been to go to that dance with him. I didn't feel the least bit jealous; in fact, I just felt sad for her. Not sad that Edward didn't return her affections, he was _mine_ after all, but sad that she'd had a glimpse of such perfection and then apparently spent her life wondering what happened to him and wishing for something that could never be. I wondered how many girls born in early twentieth century Chicago spent their lives wistfully remembering Edward Masen and wondering where he disappeared to.

I looked over at him, grateful that he was mine, and wished I could snuggle up in his lap for the rest of the trip, but that wouldn't be setting a very good example for Renesmee. We had always insisted that she buckle up - we still weren't sure if her body was as indestructible as ours, and hoped we would never have to find out, but considering her human components it was best to err on the side of caution.

Edward's face was still tense with worry, and I wished we could return to the lighthearted mood of the last two days.

He glanced over at me, and I felt the light pressure at my shield that told me he was wondering what I was thinking. Instead of asking, he just reached for my hand and squeezed it tightly. I decided to let my shield down for a minute, even though I had to unshield Renesmee and Jacob to do it. I didn't send any deliberate thoughts Edward's way, but let him hear the odd mixture of ramblings in my head - stress over the Volturi message, my pleasant memories of the last couple days, my love for him, the lust that was building sitting here just looking at him, and how I wished I could do something to improve his mood. I wasn't really verbalizing any of those thoughts inside my head - it was more a jumble of confusion even to me - but he seemed to understand.

"I think we'll all feel better after we've discussed this with Carlisle and the others," he said quietly enough that I knew he was speaking to only me, no longer including Jake and Nessie in the conversation, though they could probably hear him if they were paying attention. "Then after that I think I need to go for a run. You'll come with me, won't you?"

"Of course," I said, smiling. I let my shield slip back into place and expanded it again to include the car behind us, but not before letting him hear in my thoughts how much his idea of going for a run together pleased me. Going for a run always seemed to help clear his head, and I knew that by inviting me to accompany him he was hoping to steal some alone time with me in the woods while the whole family was there at our house. Going for a run was exactly what we needed after being cooped up in this car for over five hours, barely able to touch each other, with the weight of the Volturi message bearing on our minds.

* * *

We pulled into our garage at 4:15am. Our new home. Edward had purchased this house for us before we were married, without my knowledge or input. When he had first told me about it, during our honeymoon, it bothered me a little that he had made such a large decision, one that affected both of us, without even mentioning it to me, but I had quickly let it go. I understood his reasoning at the time, and I trusted his judgment in selecting a house. I had no real interest in shopping for real estate anyway. I would be happy anywhere, as long as we were together. Of course, Edward had anticipated what I would like and what we would need - the house was perfect. He had brought me here to see it once before, when we had first decided to enroll at Dartmouth this year.

It was huge, much larger than we needed. In fact, it was large enough for the entire family, which was probably what Edward had in mind when he bought it. Our college plans had been up in the air at the time, so he didn't know when or if we would be living in the house, or whether it would be just us or the entire family. There were eight bedrooms upstairs, and a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, and an extremely large family room on the main floor. The master bedroom was ours, the one on the far corner of the house was Renesmee's and Jacob's, and three others would be set up as bedrooms for Carlisle and Esme, Rosalie and Emmett, and Alice and Jasper. Not that they would sleep in them, of course, but it would still be nice to have a semi-private spot for each couple to call their own when they were visiting. Of the remaining three bedrooms, one would be set up as Edward's study, one as my study which would also double as my scrapbooking room, and the last one would be a guest room for when Charlie or Renée came to visit.

The house had been empty when we were here before, so I was excited to see what Alice and Esme had done in the way of furniture and decorations. Shopping and decorating were not things I enjoyed, and I knew that with Esme to rein Alice in, it would look amazing and would be in accordance with my tastes and Edward's.

I had noticed Carlisle's latest Mercedes parked in our drive, along with Jasper's newest motorcycle. Carlisle's car was a little sportier than he normally purchased, but still black and still a Mercedes. He tended to stick with the familiar. Rose and Emmett apparently rode with Carlisle and Esme. Alice, of course, would have come with Jasper on the motorcycle.

Before we could even get out of our cars the whole family rushed into the garage to meet us. I threw my arms around Esme, so happy to see her again, and Alice danced over to Edward, bouncing with excitement at our arrival. Rose rushed over to hug Renesmee. I knew she'd missed her favorite niece so much these last couple of years.

"What? Nobody wants to hug me?" Jacob complained with a grin.

"Who wants to hug a smelly wet dog?" Rosalie snapped at him, but turned from Renesmee to give him a quick hug anyway. They had learned to get along for Renesmee's sake, and sometimes I suspected they were actually starting to like each other.

"Thanks, Blondie. I always knew you loved me," Jake retorted, wrinkling his nose as they backed away from one another.

After more hugs and greetings, we headed into the house and sat down in the family room to talk. Well, we all sat except for Edward. He started out standing beside me but was soon pacing the floor. Renesmee sat down in Jacob's lap, leaning her head onto his shoulder, struggling to keep her eyes open. She had fallen asleep in the car and just woke up when we pulled into the garage.

"Nessie, dear," Carlisle smiled at his granddaughter. "Why don't you and Jake go on upstairs and get some sleep? We'll have plenty of time to visit tomorrow and the rest of the weekend."

"We'll go up in a few minutes," she mumbled.

Carlisle turned his attention to Edward. "It's been a long time since I've seen you pacing like that. You're starting to worry me. What's up, son?"

"There's something we need to tell you about, something we need to discuss as a family," Edward replied. Jasper looked at him meaningfully, no doubt having picked up on the worry the four of us were feeling, and Edward nodded slightly at him. "I just learned as we were leaving Chicago that Renesmee recently received a wedding gift from the Volturi."

The mood in the room shifted instantly.

Nessie pulled the small package out of her purse and held up the excessively extravagant bracelet. Rosalie reached for it to have a closer look, and started passing it around the room for everyone to see.

Edward continued, "The message with it said '_Our belated congratulations to the new Mrs. Black.'_ The four of us were discussing it during our drive here and we think they're just reminding us they're watching us, which is nothing we didn't already know. If they were planning to move against us any time soon, it's not likely they would have sent us a warning like this - they would need us to be distracted or complacent to catch us off guard if they wanted to harm us. So hopefully my worry is unfounded for now, but I really don't like that they sent it to Renesmee. If they wanted to send us a message they should have sent it to Carlisle, or to me. I think that's what's bothering me the most."

"Well, she is the one who got married, son," Carlisle said tentatively. "I'll admit it's entirely possible that it was intended as a veiled threat, considering our last encounter with them, but it's also possible that it was simply a wedding gift. It is their standard practice to send a gift when they hear someone has gotten married. Esme and I received a gift a few years after we married, as did Emmett and Rosalie after their first wedding. Bella's gift was different, in its gaudiness and also due to the reminder that they would be visiting to verify that she had been changed." He paused to examine the bracelet which had been passed to him. "Honestly, this gift seems more in line with the necklace they sent Esme or the ring they sent Rosalie. It seems more like their standard protocol."

"What about Alice and Jasper? They never received a gift?" I was speaking to Carlisle, but looked over to Alice and Jasper to see them shaking their heads.

"No, I don't think they knew about Alice and Jasper joining our family before Alice went to Volterra with Bella. They don't keep tabs on everyone who gets married - only the covens they consider friends or allies receive these gifts."

"And enemies," Edward asserted.

"Probably," Carlisle allowed.

Alice spoke up next. "If it's intended as a threat, they probably sent it to Nessie instead of one of us, because they knew I wouldn't be able to see it, since I can't see her future or Jake's. They could be demonstrating they know how to get around my sight."

This was a huge worry of mine. If the Volturi planned anything that targeted only Nessie or Jake, we would have no warning.

Jake began snoring, and Nessie was sound asleep on his shoulder already. They seemed comfortable, so everyone continued the discussion around them.

"They're letting us know they're aware she married a shapeshifter," Jasper speculated, trying to decipher their strategy. "I'm sure they're watching closely to see if they have any offspring. If they were to have a baby, the Volturi would consider that more than enough excuse to come after us again."

"I really don't think there's much danger of that happening," Carlisle stated. "We all know her monthly cycle stopped when she stopped aging. Pregnancy might have been a possibility if they had married a couple years earlier, but I don't think her body is capable of it now. Of course, they are in uncharted territory so I suppose anything is possible. We learned that with Edward and Bella."

"I hope they're using condoms," Emmett muttered.

"Emmett," Edward said sharply.

"Well, are they?" Emmett asked, serious concern on his face.

"Yes, they're taking precautions," Edward relented, "but she wouldn't like us talking about their personal life like this, so keep your mouth shut."

I was glad Nessie had fallen asleep. She would have been mortified at this discussion.

Jasper looked at Edward. "What you said about them waiting for us to become complacent - I think you're right about that. And I agree it seems unlikely they would attack so soon after sending us a warning message, but they may be counting on us making that assumption. It's possible they sent the note to _cause _us to become complacent. We have to remain vigilant - but as you said, that's really no different from what we've been doing for the past ten years. Ultimately, I don't think this message changes anything. It's just a reminder that they haven't forgotten us."

"Should we notify our friends who gathered with us the last time?" Rosalie wondered, "Maybe we should have them on alert in case this turns out to be more than a reminder?"

"I don't think so, not yet," Jasper answered. "It could get back to the Volturi that we're assembling an army again, and they could try to accuse us of plotting against them. At this point, we have nothing to prove to anyone that the package they sent is anything more than a wedding gift. If we receive any further communications that are more blatantly threatening then we should probably make some calls, but for now I think it's best if we just wait."

"I agree," Carlisle concurred. "We don't want to attract their attention by assembling a force against them. I realize it seems unlikely to most of you, but I've known Aro, Caius, and Marcus for a long time, and it's possible they're trying to get back in our good graces. They are fearful of us, of Bella especially, and it would be much wiser of them to have us as friends than enemies. The Volturi did not get where they are by making foolish choices about who they decide to antagonize."

I turned this idea over in my mind, and decided that he was right about at least one thing - it did seem unlikely to me. I remembered the way Aro had looked at us in Volterra, and in the field not far from our home. It was not the look of a man who wanted to be friends. However, I had a great deal of respect for Carlisle and his opinions, and his experience with the Volturi, so I allowed for some possibility that he could be correct. It was a reassuring thought that the Volturi might be too afraid of us to deliberately start anything. I wished I could really believe it.

However, there was nothing to be gained by continuing to worry over this for the next few years, or decades, or centuries, and at the moment I desperately wanted to just put it out of my mind and think about something more pleasant. The others in the room seemed to be feeling the same way, and after a few more comments, the conversation about the wedding gift and its accompanying message died down.

"Bella!" Alice jumped up, seeing that the conversation was over. "Can I show you around the house now?"

"Yes," I smiled, "that would be great. I can't wait to see what you and Esme have done. The family room is awesome. I love the furniture, and the colors are beautiful. I don't know how you do it!"

Alice beamed. She grabbed my hand and pulled me off to see the next room. Edward came with us, and Esme followed along, enjoying our reactions. In addition to the new furniture, curtains, and other decorations, they had unpacked all of our personal items and put them in the proper places, so the entire house was already set up. As we finished the tour, I realized that there was nothing left for us to do to be completely moved in other than to put away the items we had brought with us in the car.

"Alice?"

"Yes, Bella?"

"You totally rock! Everything is so perfect! It looks so much better than if I had tried to do it myself, and I can't tell you how happy I am that we don't have to unpack." I gave her a huge hug.

"Thanks, Bella! I just knew you'd love it!" She laughed, winking at us. I knew she must have seen visions of my reaction to each room.

"Thank you, too, Esme. I know you did a lot of the design and planning. You must have spent so much time on this. Thank you so much!" I gave her another hug as well.

"I'm so glad you like it, dear," she said. "If there's anything you want to change - "

"No! I don't want to change anything. It's all perfect!" I insisted.

Edward came over and put his arm around Alice. "Alice, thank you for what you did in Chicago, too. You thought of everything - you even tuned the piano. Everything was perfect." He bent down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "I owe you."

Alice bounced up and down with excitement. "Did you like your song? I played it and it sounded so familiar..." She winked at us again.

"Yes," he told her. "I have no memory of writing it, but obviously I did. Where did you find that?"

"It was in the piano bench - the top lifts up. I found it while I was cleaning .There was some more music stored there, but that was the only handwritten piece."

We went back into the family room. Jake and Nessie were still asleep, and Emmett and Rose were completely absorbed in a video game they were playing. Apparently we have a new video game system set up to go with our new enormous TV. I could envision Edward and Jake spending some good "male bonding" time there over the next four or so years that we would be living here.

"See you guys later!" Alice chirped, grabbing Jasper's hand and heading upstairs, anticipating what Edward was about to say.

"I think Bella and I are going to go for a run," Edward told Carlisle and Esme, who were the only ones still paying any attention to us.

"Have fun!" Carlisle replied, while Esme just smiled and waved goodbye..

We went outside and took off into the woods behind the house. I let Edward lead, as I had not taken time to familiarize myself with the area yet. I hadn't even looked at a map to see exactly where the house was located or how large the wooded area was. I knew he was not running full speed, since I was having no trouble keeping up with him. I enjoyed running almost as much as he did, but I was more eager to finish the run so we could have some much-needed couple time. I would be much happier when I was touching him, rather than running along behind him, though I had to admit the current view was quite nice.

Without giving him any warning, I jumped onto his back and threw my arms around his neck, so that I was positioned the way he used to carry me when he ran with me when I was human. He glanced back at me and smiled as his hands slipped underneath my knees to help hold me in place. I knew he couldn't reach top speed while carrying me, but he could go faster than when he was holding back so that I could keep up. This also meant we were now touching. Much better. I began plastering kisses on his neck and along his jaw and across the sides of his face. I felt a little guilty knowing I was distracting him from his run, but I couldn't resist.

After a couple minutes we stopped in a clearing. It didn't begin to approach the beauty of our meadow back in Forks, but it had potential. I imagined the leaves on the trees would be changing in another month or so and it would be gorgeous then. Perhaps we could plant some flowers here in the spring. The scenery, however, claimed an extremely small portion of my attention, and only for a fraction of a second. I was still clinging to Edward's back, kissing everywhere on his neck and face that I could reach.

When I managed to reach his mouth, Edward spun me around so that I was facing him. "Eager, are we?" he teased.

"For you? Always." I smiled suggestively.

"Thanks for coming for a run with me. I can feel my mood improving already." He ran his nose along my neck, taking in my scent, before starting to nibble on my ear, his hands running through my hair.

"I...would hope..so," I breathed, quickly losing my ability to carry on conversation.

* * *

It was mid-afternoon when we finally returned to the house, both of us more relaxed and in much better spirits. We had started to return a few hours earlier, because I was concerned the family might think we were being rude, heading off on our own and ignoring them for so many hours when we hadn't seen them in so long. However, when we had gotten within Edward's "hearing" range earlier, he informed me that Alice and Jasper, and Emmett and Rosalie, were deeply involved in their own private couple time, while Jacob and Renesmee were still sleeping, and Carlisle and Esme had disappeared, probably into the forest in pursuit of a truly private location for some intimate moments of their own. So we had returned to our earlier location in the clearing to enjoy a little more time alone with each other.

This time, as we got within Edward's hearing range, instead of cringing at mental images and intimate thoughts that were never intended to be shared with him, his face lit up in pure excitement.

"My car is here!" He picked up speed and nearly left me behind in his haste to see his new toy. He slowed down enough for me to catch up, then took my hand as we ran, urging me faster and faster.

There it was, parked in the driveway, with the entire family circled around it. They all seemed to be admiring it reverently. Rosalie appeared to be in deep thought, probably pondering what enhancements she might be able to make, and the others were all trying to get a closer look, but seemingly afraid to touch it. Of course, it went without saying that Edward would be the one to get to drive it first. But come on, it was just a car. Why the looks of awe? Especially Jacob - he looked completely stunned, and stood back a little further from it, as if he felt unworthy to be in its presence.

I wanted to yell out to them that it was just a car, but I didn't want to put a damper on Edward's excitement. I wanted him to enjoy his new toy.

It was a rather nice-looking car, and rather sporty. It was mostly black, with a section of silvery-gray in front. I could tell just by looking at it that it would be fast. I envisioned Edward behind the wheel - now _that_ would make it a seriously impressive-looking car.

The family backed away from it as he approached, Alice beaming, Rose planning, and the others just staring.

"Dude! You really got one! I never thought you'd do it!" Emmett bellowed in amazement.

"We haven't touched it," Jasper assured him. "It was just delivered a few minutes ago."

"Son, I'm almost envious." Carlisle looked over it appraisingly.

"Almost?" Edward smirked. "You can take it for a spin in a few minutes, but I've got to demonstrate its appeal to Bella first. I don't think she was paying much attention when I was trying to tell her about it earlier."

He walked around it once, verifying it had arrived undamaged. He excitedly opened the passenger door and motioned for me to get in. I reflexively dusted myself off, to ensure no reminders of our romp in the forest clung to my pants. I sat down and was enveloped in luxury. The new car smell was intoxicating. My beautiful red Ferrari suddenly seemed old and mundane.

"Bella?" Jake looked conflicted. He was practically drooling over the car but seemed upset with himself for not finding its pretentiousness more offensive.

"What?"

"Did you know this was what he was getting?" Jake seemed to be questioning my sanity.

"Yeah, I don't remember what it's called, but it looks like the picture he showed me, with the two colors." I glanced around and took note of the logo - "Bugatti Veyron Gen III" - but it didn't mean anything to me. I looked over at Edward, who was now sitting in the driver's seat, attempting to look patient while Jake continued to question me.

"Do you know how much these cost?" He seemed confident that I didn't.

"I told him he should get whatever he really wanted. I honestly don't want to know what it cost. It really doesn't matter." I shrugged. Why would he care what Edward spent on a new vehicle? The Aston Martin Jake had been driving wasn't exactly an economy car. He had to have known that Edward would be getting a nice car, and that it wouldn't be cheap.

I closed the car door, and just as we began to pull away I heard Jake mutter "One-point-eight million dollars."

I looked at Edward. "This car cost almost two million dollars?" Did they even _make_ cars that expensive?

He shrugged. "You told me to indulge myself for once." He grinned. "And I did. This is the fastest car currently on the market."

The number just sounded really large, and to Jake I knew it must seem astronomical.

I hadn't involved myself much in our finances. Early in our marriage, Edward had wanted to sit down and go over all of it with me, but I honestly didn't want to know all the details and didn't want to hear about our net worth. I knew from phone calls I'd overheard that it was not uncommon for him to make transactions and investments in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. I knew that we contributed heavily to a number of charities. I knew that with Alice's sound advice on stock market investments, our income was nearly limitless. But two million dollars for a car?

Edward glanced over at me, a look of concern forming on his face. "You don't mind, do you? We talked... I thought you were okay it."

I really didn't care about the money. I was thinking more of how Jacob and Renesmee might feel about us flaunting such an extravagant car when they were struggling to make it on their own financially. But I was determined not to bring Edward down from his high. I wanted to see that giddy smile back on his face. "Oh, I don't mind. I'm okay with it, I promise. I really don't care about the money - I trust your judgment in that area completely." I smiled reassuringly. "I'm glad you decided to indulge yourself. You deserve it. You haven't had a new car in twelve years!"

"So what do you think?" he asked, beginning to relax a little.

"It's great! I love the interior - it's so luxurious." I looked around, taking in all the details. It really was impressive.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I like it even more than my Ferrari." I raised my eyebrows for emphasis.

"I knew you would like it." His earlier smile had returned. "We can get you one like it, if you want."

"No, that won't be necessary." I laughed.

"Why not? We could get you a different color."

"What happened to trying to blend in? This car is the epitome of ostentatiousness. You think we wouldn't attract attention with _both_ of us driving these around? Trust me, you'll get us enough attention without me driving one too."

"Ostentatiousness? Is that even a word?"

"Yes, it is. I saw it in a dictionary once."

He laughed. "I won't be driving it to school. We'll take your ten-year-old Ferrari to class - it will blend in pretty well here. I assure you, there will be other newer and more expensive cars in the parking lot."

"So this is another special occasion car?"

"Yes and no. I'll probably avoid taking it out in the daytime after today, but I plan to use it more than I did the Aston Martin. I want to enjoy driving it, not keep it locked up in the garage. We'll use it when we drive to Massachusetts to visit the family at Harvard, and other trips out of town.

"Do you realize that we now have 3 cars that are two-seaters? We own three ostentatious cars, and not one of them will allow the four of us to travel together in one vehicle."

I could tell from the flicker of realization crossing his face that he somehow hadn't considered this previously.

"Are you saying you want to trade the Ferrari in for a sedan?" he teased.

"No, but we probably should have at least one 'normal' car that our whole immediate family can ride in."

"Another Volvo?"

"I don't know... Would you let _me_ pick out the normal car? By myself?

He looked over at me, perplexed. "Sure. Buy whatever you want, love. I can't wait to see what you pick out."

"So when do I get to drive _this_ car?" I asked, as he made a U-turn so that we could head back towards home.

A huge smile spread across his face. "You _do_ like it! You can drive it right now." He immediately pulled over and we switched places. I felt a tingle of excitement as I slipped behind the wheel - an unusual reaction for me.

I was actually a bit surprised he was so enthused about giving up the driver's seat. He really did want me to like the car. And what wasn't to like? I had never driven a car that accelerated so quickly, and we were already easily exceeding the top speed of the Ferrari. It responded like an extension of my own body, and I thrilled to the speed.

I glanced over at Edward to see him watching me with a smile so huge it seemed he might explode with excitement.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You really like it! I'm just thrilled that you can finally appreciate a nice car!"

"Of course I like it! Why wouldn't I?"

"You seemed unsure at first. The price tag really doesn't bother you? What were you thinking earlier?"

"No, the price doesn't bother me - I know you can afford it. I was just thinking of Jacob and Renesmee, and how they must feel seeing you with this car when they're so set on making their own way financially. They may never be able to afford anything like this, if they won't let us help and won't even let Alice give them advice. What were they thinking earlier when they were admiring the car before we left? I forgot to shield them...did you notice their thoughts?"

"First of all, _we_ can afford it. It's not my money, it's ours. But to answer your question - Nessie was thinking it's a really cool car and wondering if I might let her borrow it sometimes. Jake was shocked, and I will admit, seemed a bit envious. I think he'll be okay, though, after I let him take it for a spin."

"You're going to let him drive it?"

"Sure, why not? He's a great driver and has too much respect for the car to do anything reckless with it."

I pulled back into the drive and the family was still standing there waiting for our return.

We got out of the car and I tossed the keys to Carlisle. "I think Edward said you're up next."

He grinned as he caught them and it occurred to me that he looked almost like a teenage boy who had just gotten his license, in his exuberance at being allowed to drive. I'd never seen Carlisle so excited about a car. "Come on, Esme," he encouraged her. He opened the passenger door and gallantly helped her in, and they were soon speeding away.

Emmett, Rosalie, Alice, and Jasper started talking amongst themselves, and Renesmee and Jacob came over to talk to Edward and me.

Jake shook his head. "I can't believe you got a Veyron!" he exclaimed to Edward. "A bit of a step up from the Volvo, isn't it?"

"You have something against Volvos?" Edward teased. "I thought my Volvo was pretty nice."

"Sure, sure, but it could _almost _pass as a normal car. This one practically screams, 'Hey, look at me! I'm filthy rich bloodsucker!" He laughed.

"Jake!" Nessie scolded. Like me, she had never cared for the name-calling, even when it was good-natured.

Edward just ignored the epithet. "Most people around here have probably never heard of Bugatti and won't even recognize what kind of car it is. I don't plan on driving it to school, but it will be good for quick trips to visit the family in Cambridge. It's a hundred and twenty-file mile drive, and should only take about thirty minutes in this car. Maybe less if we drive in the middle of the night when there's minimal traffic."

"I've heard the top speed is listed as 267 mph, and when going that fast it will run out of gas in twelve minutes. Isn't all that refueling going to slow you down?" Jacob laughed.

"Not when Rosalie and Alice are finished with it." Edward said smugly.

"Alice?" Jake's forehead wrinkled in confusion. I was wondering the same thing. Since when did Alice work on cars with Rosalie?

"Alice has been searching for future design enhancements that Rosalie can implement," Edward explained. "Rosalie will be boosting the engine and making some significant improvements in fuel efficiency. She thinks it might be able to achieve speeds near 300 mph by the time she's finished with it. And we'll easily be able to make it from here to Harvard without refueling along the way."

"Cool. So how was your test drive?"

"Perfect. Absolutely perfect. You want to try it next?"

"Really? You'd really let me touch that car?"

"Sure. Let your wife drive on the way back, if you don't mind." He winked at Nessie. "Everyone else is still waiting for a turn too."

Nessie's face lit up and she bounced up and down in excitement. Had she really doubted that she would get a turn?

We all watched as Carlisle and Esme pulled back into the drive. Carlisle got out, beaming, and tossed the keys back to Edward. "Very nice, Edward, _very _nice. Sorry we were gone so long but I filled up the gas tank...it was running low."

"Thanks." Edward handed the keys to Jake.

To everyone's surprise, Jake shook his head, looking torn. "As much as I want to... If anything happened to it while I was driving... I could never afford..."

"Jake, it's fine. I trust you. Even if something happens beyond your control, it's insured and it can be replaced. Don't worry about it. Really. You won't hurt it. Go ahead, enjoy."

Nessie put her hand on Jake's face. Whatever she showed him, it erased his hesitation. He took the keys and they both eagerly climbed into the vehicle.

"What were they thinking?" I asked when they had left. I hadn't bothered shielding them because I was still worrying over what Jake thought about us getting such an expensive car.

"Well, probably nothing you didn't pick up on already. He was surprised I'd let him drive it, and was afraid something would happen to it that he couldn't afford to fix. Nessie showed him how excited she was for them to try it out, and of course he can't resist doing anything that would make her happy."

"So he's less envious now?" I was asking Edward, but then I noticed Jasper seemed to be following our conversation so I looked to him for the answer.

"There's a little envy, but it's not that strong," Jasper offered, coming over to where we were standing. "Excitement was the predominant emotion. You don't need to worry about him, Bella. He was only mildly more annoyed by this display of wealth than what he normally is by everything else - the house, the cars, the clothes, the food. He had to have known it would be a flashy car but he was still really surprised when he saw it. We all were, actually - Edward is usually a bit more conservative when selecting a vehicle. He's always been the more practical one. You've been good for him, Bella. It's nice seeing him allowing himself to enjoy a new car so thoroughly." He reached over and gave Edward a brotherly punch on the shoulder.

I couldn't have agreed with Jasper more - it was great seeing Edward enjoying anything so much. Sure, it was an extravagant, ridiculously ostentatious, and completely unnecessary vehicle, but anything that could put a smile like that on Edward's face had my approval. And it _was_ a really cool car. Even _I_ could see that. It was also a very welcome distraction from our little reminder of the Volturi's interest in our family. Everyone seemed to be in a better mood today.

Rosalie and Emmett drove the car next, then Alice and Jasper, then I rode with Edward again when he took it out a second time.

The rest of the weekend was pleasant, mostly spent with us all just talking and catching up with one another. Although I knew the Volturi threat was in the back of everyone's minds, no one spoke of it, and I was glad. I had decided to try to focus on the positive until we receive a more definite threat.

We told the rest of the family about our last day in La Push, and how Charlie had finally asked us for the truth about what we were. Carlisle commented that he was surprised it took him ten years, considering his marriage to Sue and the amount of time he spent with our family. He agreed with Edward that his connection with the Quileutes should make his knowledge a non-issue. We explained exactly how much we had told Charlie, and what information we had withheld for the time being. Emmett had a good laugh when Edward told them how Charlie seemed to like him better knowing he was a vampire.

We also showed everyone the pictures we had brought back from Chicago. Alice had left a spot on the wall in Edward's study for the large painting of him with his parents, and a spot on a shelf for his parents' wedding picture. If anyone asked, they were pictures of his ancestors.

We talked about the classes we had each signed up for at Dartmouth, and the schedule changes we had been informed of by mail - we had received letters from the university informing us that due to some last minute faculty changes, the time slots for certain classes had been moved around. One of my night classes, chemistry, had been moved to 5pm, and one of Jake and Nessie's business classes had also been moved to 5pm. I was worried when I first read that, since sunset would be after 5pm for the first couple months of school, and there were a lot more sunny days here than in Forks. However, when I voiced my concern, Edward grinned sheepishly and told me I'd be fine since the class was in the science building - he and Carlisle had anonymously funded a covered parking structure for that building when they attended Dartmouth the first time, a few decades ago.

Carlisle and Edward spent an entire afternoon discussing Carlisle's oncology research, while Rosalie and Emmett worked on enhancing the Veyron, and Alice excitedly showed Renesmee and me the new school clothes she had ready for us in our closets. Most of the outfits were actually pretty cute, and I knew they would help us blend in with the other college students. Over the years Alice and I had reached a compromise, with me agreeing to dress up a little more, at least part of the time, and her learning to avoid certain styles and fabrics that I simply refused to wear. I was grateful for her efforts. Nessie was excited about her new clothes - she enjoyed fashion nearly as much as Alice - and was eager to try on everything, so she gave us a fashion show.

Eventually, the family all left, headed back in time for their first day of classes at Harvard. Alice, Jasper, Rosalie, and Emmett were starting their second year there, and it was Carlisle's third year in his position.

I decided I'd better pack my backpack to be ready for classes the next day, but of course when I found the backpack I discovered that Alice had already packed it for me, and had done the same for Edward, Renesmee, and Jacob. A "first day" outfit was laid out for each of us, as well.

Jake and Nessie went to bed early, wanting to be sure to get a good night's sleep before starting classes. Their first class was at 8am, so they would not be able to sleep in like they had been doing recently.

As soon as we were sure they were sound asleep, Edward chased me up the steps to our room and playfully tackled me as I let myself fall onto our new bed. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him closer, worries about the Volturi temporarily forgotten.

* * *

**A/N: Edward's new car is a fictitious 2017 third-generation version of the Bugatti Veyron Fbg - you can find a picture of the current model at wikipedia. I'm envisioning it looking about the same but being more expensive and faster due to the improvements in technology that should occur in the next 7 years.**


	14. Eli

Chapter 14: Eli

I walked into the chemistry classroom several minutes early and selected a seat in the back, on the side of the room nearest the door.

I was excited to finally be attending my first real college class, ten years after graduating from high school. I had already earned an English degree by taking online courses, but speeding through the course work from the privacy of my own home was not quite the same experience as actually attending college where I could interact with the professors and other students, at least to some extent.

So today marked my first time being in class as a vampire. Though it was not my first time trying to blend with a group of humans, it was my first time trying to blend in with a group of humans I would be seeing on a regular basis for at least an entire semester, many of them probably throughout all four years of college. For the first eight years our marriage, Edward and I were focused on keeping Renesmee and her accelerated growth concealed from the public, so I had spent most of my time at home with her, aside from the many vacations we took as a family. And for the most recent two years, we had lived in La Push, where we did not need to keep up the human charade except when non-Quileute humans happened to be visiting.

Here, it was important to be successful at blending in. I had to remember not to attract unnecessary attention, to avoid exposure.

I had plenty of practice with blinking and fidgeting to look human, but I was excited and a bit nervous being here, so I had to keep reminding myself not to sit too still.

My inhuman beauty would also be more of an issue now. I had been so ordinary and even outright clumsy as a human; it still sometimes took me by surprise the way humans now universally regarded me as a graceful beauty. It hadn't mattered so much if our physical appearance attracted attention when we were traveling, since those people probably wouldn't see us again, and it hadn't mattered in La Push, since the Quileutes already knew what we were. But here, a flawless physical appearance was likely to attract attention from people who would see us on a regular basis, and the more attention we received, the higher the risk that someone would notice that something was off, and try to figure us out. Thus, I arrived early and sat in the back.

I watched the other students arriving and smiled politely at the girl who took the seat just to my left. She smelled quite good, and I felt the familiar burn in my throat. She returned the smile, but seemed a bit uneasy and turned her attention to her backpack and began fumbling through its contents. It was almost time for class to start and the seats were nearly all filled. I was firmly in control of my thirst and felt quite pleased that being in this room full of human strangers was really not a significant temptation for me. Yes, they smelled delicious, but I was accustomed to the burn and was firmly in control of myself.

Suddenly, I caught a scent which I instantly recognized as vampire, and it was not anyone I had met previously. I recalled what Edward had said about it not being too unusual to encounter other vampires at an ivy league school. The newcomer slipped into the room just as the professor was walking to the front to begin class. He sat in the only remaining seat, in the front row, on the opposite end of the room from me.

I knew he would have caught my scent as well. He turned to look at me for a brief instant - long enough for me to take note of the deep blackness of his eyes - and then began to direct his attention toward the professor. Had I felt something bounce off my mental shield? I faced toward the professor as well but continued watching the fellow immortal in my peripheral vision. A look of confusion and perhaps frustration crossed his face. He turned toward me again, staring intently this time, and I could definitely detect a faint pressure against my shield. This felt different than the brief mental nudge I felt when Edward was wondering what I was thinking. The pressure lasted longer, a faint mental vibration that was several seconds in duration.

What was this vampire stranger trying to do to me? I returned his stare, arching one eyebrow at him with a quizzical look on my face. His expression turned to one of surprise. He must suspect by now that I was intentionally blocking him, that I had detected his efforts. He had likely never been blocked before, and was wondering how I was stopping whatever he was trying to do to me. We would have to speak after class; I was curious to learn what his talent was. What, exactly, was I blocking?

I couldn't help but wonder - might it be something that could be useful if we ever had another confrontation with the Volturi?

I hoped we could be friends. Surely one who chose to live among humans, even briefly to obtain an education, would have enough in common with us to be an ally rather than an enemy.

The professor had introduced himself as Dr. Ross, and announced that he would like each of us to briefly introduce ourselves as well - we should each state our name and a sentence or two about ourselves. However, Dr. Ross had noticed the silent exchange between me and the mysteriously talented vampire. "Do you two know one another?" he inquired, glancing back and forth between us.

"No, but I plan to rectify that situation as soon as this class is over." My potential new friend spoke in a deep, confident voice, and flashed a wide smile in my direction, much to the amusement of the others in the room. I looked at him, feeling a smirk cross my face. So much for avoiding attention. The other students had shifted their gaze to me. They probably thought his interest was due to my physical beauty, and they were probably all assuming I would be attracted to him in the same way, since his vampire-enhanced features left him looking like a male model even in his nondescript flannel shirt and worn jeans.

The attention I was receiving did not bother me in quite the same way it had when I had first moved to Forks, enrolling in high school in the middle of my junior year. I was more confident now; I had found my place in life. But I really did not need to be receiving this much attention, as I needed to maintain a fairly low profile in the interest of avoiding exposure. I reminded myself to blink and recrossed my legs.

The laughter died down and the professor returned to the introductions. "Your name, sir?"

"Eli Congleton." He grinned at the professor before continuing with the "sentence or two" about himself. "I am an avid hiker and outdoorsman. I hiked the Appalachian Trail this past summer."

"Quite impressive, Mr. Congleton. You hiked the entire length of the trail in one summer?"

"Yes, sir." He smirked.

Dr. Ross turned to me. "And you?"

I reminded myself to lower my voice to a human-sounding frequency and stated my name. "Bella Cullen." I paused, pondering what interesting fact I should share about myself.

"Nice to meet you, Miss Cullen, could you -" I could tell he was about to prompt me for that extra sentence or two but I didn't let him finish.

"It's _Mrs._ Cullen, actually. My husband and I just moved here from Washington State, along with my sister-in-law and her husband." I turned to Eli with a smile and added, "We also enjoy hiking; I should introduce you to my husband."

Several students chuckled as they realized I wouldn't be returning the presumed interest of the rather confident-sounding Eli. Some of the male students looked a bit disappointed, no doubt realizing that their own chances of a romantic relationship with me were pretty much zero, as I was already taken. That was good. I didn't need an army of Mike Newtons following me around.

Dr. Ross continued randomly selecting students to introduce themselves. The rest of the introductions went rather quickly. The girl with whom I had exchanged smiles at the beginning of class was named Amelia, and was planning to pursue a medical degree. I catalogued in my mind the name of each student and the tidbit of information they each shared with the class. Dr. Ross then reviewed the syllabus with us, talked about his expectations for the class, and even got a short lecture in before the class ended.

As I left my seat, I noticed that Eli was matching my pace, so that we were walking alongside one another as we exited the room. In my peripheral vision I saw Dr. Ross grin and shake his head slightly at Eli's persistence.

"So what were you trying to do to me back there?" I demanded with a smile, being sure to keep a friendly tone to my voice.

"I'll explain that shortly," he promised, "but first - and I don't mean to be rude but my curiosity is simply eating away at me - you must tell me why your eyes are such a strange amber color."

"It's my diet," I explained, my voice low enough that no one else could hear. "My family and I are 'vegetarians.' We hunt animals instead of humans."

"Really? How long can you survive on the blood of animals?" His tone of voice, as well as the expression on his face, told me that he was intrigued. Might he consider trying our lifestyle? I knew I shouldn't get my hopes up. As far as I was aware, the only person - outside our family members - that Carlisle had been able to persuade to adopt our diet was Laurent, and his attempt could be considered halfhearted at best. The others had mostly been either intrigued or repulsed, but even those who found the idea fascinating had not altered their diet. I studied Eli's eyes - they were very dark, with just a hint of burgundy, so slight that it would probably be undetectable by human eyes. He must be very thirsty but he hadn't seemed to have any problems with his control in the classroom.

"Forever, I assume." I smiled. "My father-in-law recently celebrated his 374th birthday, and has never consumed human blood." I watched his expression as he digested this piece of information. He wasn't laughing or curling his lip in disgust. Maybe this idea actually made sense to him. Maybe he had a conscience and would be interested in trying our diet.

"And you? How long have you gone without human blood?" His fascination really seemed sincere - I was beginning to like him.

"It's been nearly 10 years since I was changed, and I haven't killed anyone yet." I considered clarifying that my record was not as perfect as Carlisle's, since I did drink donated human blood during my pregnancy with Renesmee, but that would open up too many other questions. Time to steer the conversation back in the right direction. "I've answered your question, now please tell me what you were trying to do to me in the classroom."

"I was just trying to scan your thoughts. I smelled your scent as I entered the room, and was naturally curious, especially when I noticed the odd color of your eyes, but I couldn't hear anything from you. How were you blocking me?"

My mind was racing. Another mind-reader? Edward would find this interesting. Did his talent work the same as Edward's? Most likely not, as Eleazar had told us that every talent was unique in some way, and I had yet to meet two vampires with exactly the same talent. And I had never heard Edward refer to "scanning" a person's mind...he just "heard" them.

"My mind is shielded; I'm not sure how or why, but it was present even when I was still human. I seem to be immune to all special talents of our kind that work on the mind." I answered his question and then proceeded to bombard him with some more of my own: "So how does your mind-reading work? How close do you have to be to hear someone? Can you hear multiple people at the same time? Can you hear only current thoughts or can you see memories as well?"

"Those were some very good questions." He looked surprised. "Have you met other mind-readers?"

"You first."

He smiled. "I can scan only one mind at a time, and I have to be fairly close - usually within the same building or within visual range in an open area. I can scan memories as well, but it takes more effort, and I've learned to ask permission first, at least with our kind. Most people seem to find it rather disconcerting to have unexpected memories being dredged up in their head. And, understandably, those who are aware of my abilities usually take offense if I scan their memories uninvited. It is more invasive than just scanning their thoughts. I try to respect people's wishes as much as possible."

Interesting. His abilities seemed to be a combination of Edward's and Aro's, more limited in some ways but more powerful in others. His mind-reading was limited to one person at a time, like Aro, but with the advantage of being able to do it from a distance, like Edward. His memory-scanning was more limited than Aro's because he couldn't absorb them all at once, but, again, was more powerful in being able to do it from a distance. And apparently his target would recall the memories in his or her own mind while being scanned, whereas Alice had told me she couldn't see or hear any memories when Aro had touched her. Edward's gift was more powerful than Eli's, in that he could read multiple minds at once, and from greater distances, but more limited because he couldn't access memories at all.

"I know of two other mind-readers," I told him, "but their abilities work somewhat differently than yours. My husband, Edward, can hear multiple thoughts at once, up to a few miles away depending on how familiar that 'voice' is to him. But he can't read memories - he can only hear a person's current thoughts. Aro, on the other hand, must touch the person with the palm of his hand, and can only hear one mind at a time, but within a few seconds he can know every thought that person ever had." I noticed Eli looked quite surprised that I knew two others with abilities similar to his own.

"Who is Aro? Does he live in this area too?" He seemed to be wondering if I might introduce him. He obviously had not met the Volturi.

I laughed humorlessly. "Fortunately, no. He's one of the Volturi. Surely you have heard of them?"

"Yes, of course. But I don't know them personally. I'm quite interested to know what circumstances caused you to meet?" His eyes narrowed as he considered what I might have been involved in, to warrant a visit from the Volturi, or why I might have chosen to visit with them.

"Well, Eli, that's a long story. I'll let Edward explain. I have a feeling you two will be able to communicate quite efficiently with one another."

"Yes, we probably could." He smiled. "I look forward to meeting him. I've never had the opportunity to 'talk' to another mind-reader before. Where are we going, anyway?" We had crossed the campus and were now, quite obviously, headed toward the cafeteria building. It was another hour until sunset, but thankfully it was cloudy this evening. Edward and I had planned to meet Jacob & Renesmee for their evening meal, since three of us had five o'clock classes. Of course Eli was confused - why would vampires, who don't eat, be going to the cafeteria?

"We're going to the cafeteria to meet my family. I'd like you to introduce you to them."

"The cafeteria?" A look of amusement and bewilderment crossed his face at the thought of meeting in the cafeteria, surrounded by the stench of human food.

"My son-in-law is human, sort of. I'll let Edward explain about him too. But he eats human food, which is why we're meeting in the cafeteria."

I could tell his curiosity was brimming over, but we were nearly there, and he didn't press me for details.

"The sister-in-law I mentioned in class is actually my daughter," I added. "She looks a bit more like my husband, so our public 'story' here at Dartmouth is that she is his sister."

He nodded in acknowledgment. It was common for those vampires who lived amongst humans to assign human relationships within their coven when explaining their group to humans. He probably assumed that by "daughter" I meant someone I had changed, and probably assumed it was due to coincidence, rather than genetics, that caused her to look more like my husband.

As we entered the cafeteria I spotted Edward sitting at a table in the far corner of the room, slipping his cell phone back in his pocket. He looked up at us with anticipation. Alice must have called him. I wondered exactly what she had seen. Would this stranger turn out to be a friend, as I was beginning to suspect? Edward was looking at me but I knew he was listening to Eli's thoughts by now. How much of our conversation had Edward already heard, through Eli's ears? He may have even heard our conversation in the classroom, as it was not too great a distance from the cafeteria, or from the library where Edward was planning to hang out while I was in my early class. I knew he was more sensitive to hearing our kind...Eli's thoughts would have stood out among the sea of humans.

Eli followed my gaze and had no problem spotting Edward, who was easily identifiable since he was the only other vampire in the room, and he was looking at us intently with his stunning topaz eyes. A look of confusion, and... pain? crossed Eli's face suddenly and he briefly stopped in his tracks as his hands instinctively flew to cover his ears, and his eyes squeezed shut. He must have scanned Edward's mind and would have been overwhelmed with all the 'voices' from the humans in the cafeteria, as he was accustomed to hearing only one at a time. Edward briefly looked a bit uncomfortable but not surprised. He must have heard enough of our conversation to have been prepared for the mental intrusion.

Eli recovered, collected himself, and continued with me to the table where Edward was waiting for us.

Edward spoke first, before I could make introductions. "I'm sorry, I know that was disorienting. This would be much easier if we were not in this crowded cafeteria. You'll need to focus on my conscious thought and try to ignore all the other voices. The echo is because we each hear our own thoughts repeated back in the other's mind." Not only was Edward not caught off guard by Eli's talent, but he seemed to have developed some level of trust in him already, as he was offering advice on how to make the next attempt more productive. He must not have sensed any malevolence in Eli's mind. I was glad that my instincts seemed to be on target, as I had already divulged a bit more information that I probably should have if he had turned out to be someone of a sinister nature. A thought struck me suddenly - he could have been planted here by the Volturi to keep an eye on us - but surely Edward would detect that in his mind if that were the case. I forced myself to relax.

"Forgive me, I should have at least introduced myself before trying to scan your thoughts. I'm afraid I do it a bit instinctively at times; I meant no offense. My name is Eli. Your wife and I are in the same chemistry class." Eli and I sat down at the table.

"Yes, I know, I heard your conversation with her earlier. I'm afraid I give privacy to no one - there's certainly no need for you to apologize for scanning my thoughts in return."

"How long have you been listening?"

"Since you were on your way to class, probably once you were within about three miles of campus. Your mind is louder than those of the humans, and I kept listening to determine if you were a threat; I'm sure you understand. There are so many questions in your head! Would you like to try... scanning me again? Bella is right, communication would be much faster if you could hear me too. Just remember to focus on my conscious thought and try to ignore the rest."

Eli's eyes narrowed as he focused, and the mental conversation resumed. Various expressions flickered across their faces at a speed that would not be noticeable to a human.

After a minute or so, Eli suddenly appeared quite confused and looked over at me questioningly, having apparently ended his scan. I glanced back at Edward and immediately recognized "that look" on his face. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Jacob and Renesmee approaching, and threw my shield around them as they came to sit down by us. Eli's nose wrinkled a bit at Jake's smell but he quickly rearranged his features to a friendly smile. Jake trembled briefly but calmed himself - I knew he had assessed Eli's extremely dark eyes and that he would not have missed that faint hint of burgundy, but he was sitting with us as our guest so Jake knew to behave himself.

I made the appropriate introductions. "Eli, this our daughter, Renesmee, and her husband Jacob. Nessie and Jake, this is Eli from my chemistry class. His talent is similar to Edward's, but he can hear only one mind at a time."

"Just what I needed," Jake complained. "Another leech in my head." Leave it to Jake to make a good first impression. I heard a thud under the table. "No offense intended," he added quickly, after Renesmee had kicked him.

"Had you finished filling Eli in on Nessie & Jake?" I looked at Edward, who was still glaring at Jacob for making such a rude comment in front of someone we just met.

Edward turned to me and nodded affirmatively.

Eli spoke up. "Yes, a human-vampire hybrid and a shape-shifting 'werewolf'." He smiled at each of them, ignoring Jake's earlier insult. "An amazing story, and quite ironic. I'm truly pleased to meet you." Then he turned to Edward and inquired, "So what was that there at the end? You seemed to be yelling at me in a foreign language? And there was music..."

Edward grimaced. "Sorry about that. That wasn't directed at you. I was just trying to block Jake. From my own mind. His mind is louder than the others due to our familiarity and his increasing proximity as they were approaching our table. You see, they are newlyweds, and he makes very vivid mental pictures... Nessie is my daughter, and, well, you can imagine... We try to give them as much mental privacy as possible."

Renesmee blushed and looked at Eli apologetically. "I hope Jake didn't make you too uncomfortable."

"No, I didn't see anything inappropriate," he responded. I wondered if he might be lying in an effort to be gentlemanly. His gaze returned to Edward. "So what _was_ that? What were you doing to block him?"

"I was translating the medical textbook I read this morning to Tagalog while playing a musical composition in my head," he admitted. "I've found that if I think about something that requires deep concentration, I can temporarily ignore loud intrusive thoughts. It's much the same as what my family members do when they want to block me."

"All that to block little old me?" Jake grinned. "I'd always kind of wondered what you were doing." He grew more serious. "I really don't think things to just to irritate you. I do try to control my thoughts. I'm just not very good at it."

"I know."

"Of course you do." Jake rolled his eyes.

"It's actually been a long time since you irritated me intentionally. And you _have_ been getting a little better at controlling your thoughts. I do appreciate your efforts."

Eli looked back and forth between Jacob and Renesmee, and I felt the faint vibration against my shield where they were sitting. Jacob was shoveling food into his mouth - he was starting on his second tray already - and Renesmee was picking over the items on her plate, eating a bite here and there, mostly for the sake of appearance. She wouldn't have to cough it up later, but she much preferred blood to cafeteria food. Eli looked at Edward questioningly. "Are you still blocking him now? Why can't _I_ hear them? I can't hear anything from either him or your daughter."

"I'm shielding them," I admitted. "I try to do that whenever we're all together. It gives Edward some relief, and I'm sure they appreciate the occasional privacy."

"So you can shield more than yourself," he noted. He turned to address Edward. "And you can't turn it off? You can't just not listen? I don't hear anything myself unless I deliberately scan someone's mind."

"No," Edward explained, "I wish I _could_ turn it off at will. I definitely envy you that ability. And not just because of Jacob," he added, casting a glance his way. "What you heard earlier - the people in the cafeteria and surrounding buildings - I hear that any time I'm in a populated area. All I can do is shift my focus. I can never get rid of the noise."

Eli eyed him sympathetically. "I can't imagine living with that all the time."

"I manage."

"It can't be as easy as you make it look."

"Would you like to resume your scan?" Edward offered. I could tell he was ready to shift the attention off of himself - he didn't enjoy sympathy any more than I did. "I still need to answer your questions about our interactions with the Volturi. And you were curious about our hunting habits."

I watched as Eli's eyes narrowed in concentration once more. Edward's eyes closed, and we all sat there for several minutes in silence while they exchanged thoughts and answered one another's questions. I watched their expressions change at vampire speed and tried to guess which part of the story they were on. At one point a look of pure pain crossed Eli's face and he flinched. That must have been the part about Jane, when we were in Volterra. I shuddered. The expressions continued to shift, but for the most part he simply looked amazed. Edward looked intrigued as well. Eli must be sharing information about himself too.

This was clearly a more even exchange than the ones which had occurred between Edward and Aro. Perhaps more of a conversation. I wondered what it was like, mentally sharing information, hearing your own thoughts repeated in the mind of the other person and reading back their reaction, and simultaneously being bombarded with whatever was already on the other person's mind, not to mention all of the human thoughts around us in the background. And all the while trying to stay focused on what you needed to tell the other person, and perhaps trying to hide things you didn't want them to hear. It was a good thing our kind had the ability to mentally multitask.

"Wow, that was quite a story. I had heard warnings about the Volturi, of course, but I had no idea." Eli looked a bit stunned. He was glancing around the table at us, his scan apparently ended.

Edward was looking at Eli quizzically. "You recognized Tanya?"

"Tanya? Is that the name of the strawberry blonde? I've seen her in the memories of several humans. Their memories of her were always... very pleasant."

Edward laughed. "Yes, Tanya has a fondness for human men." He raised an eyebrow, apparently in response to Eli's thoughts. "No, she doesn't limit herself to humans."

"She pursued Edward once," I offered. Jake and Nessie both looked at us in surprise.

"And you resisted?" Eli was incredulous.

He laughed again. "Yes, Bella has always been the only one for me. Tanya is charming in her way, but I think of her as a relative. She was intrigued by my mind-reading ability, so I'm sure she would find you fascinating as well. We will have to arrange for you to meet her sometime."

"I would like that," Eli grinned. "So how is she your relative?"

"My family considers her and the others in her coven to be our cousins, because they're the only others we know who practice the 'vegetarian' lifestyle."

"Yes, I had noticed her odd eye color in the memories of the humans."

I suddenly wondered if I had reminded him of Tanya when he first noticed my eyes in chemistry class. Had he thought I was a succubus too? I was glad I couldn't blush anymore.

"Would you like to go hunting with us tonight?" Edward offered.

"Yes, I would. I'm not sure why I never thought of animals. It seems like such an obvious solution."

"You've decided to try our lifestyle?" I asked him.

"Yes. I've struggled for a long time with the idea of having to kill humans to sustain myself. I scanned the mind of my prey once, during the kill, purely out of curiosity, and it gave me an aversion to killing humans. When I'm tempted I scan their thoughts because it helps me see them as people rather than prey, and it helps me resist longer. I often go a few weeks between hunting trips because I always feel so guilty after I feed, but eventually my thirst always overcomes me. I've tried to hunt only the most perverse, most evil minds, but it still bothers me."

"Did Edward tell you about his rebellious years?" I blurted out my question, fascinated by the fact that he and Edward had used the same approach to hunting humans, then immediately kicked myself at my lack of forethought. It wasn't Edward's favorite topic. I glanced over at Jake - I wasn't entirely certain if he even knew about the "rebellious years." I knew Edward had told Nessie, although I wasn't sure how much detail he had given her. But surely she had mentioned it to Jake.

"Yes, it seems we have a lot in common."

I supposed it made sense that it would be more difficult for mind-readers to kill "good" humans than it was for "regular" vampires. But it didn't seem to make any difference to Aro, so it was not true in every case. It was seeming more and more likely that Eli would turn out to be a friend - he obviously had a conscience, and he and Edward did indeed seem to have a lot in common.

"So those rebellious years..." Jake began, looking at Edward. "Was that the only time you ever killed humans? You've never killed anyone who wasn't evil?"

I felt bad for bringing the topic up. I knew Edward was severely ashamed of that period of his life, but he answered the question. "My victims were all attempting to engage in less-than-honorable criminal activities immediately prior to their deaths, and their minds were cesspools. Mostly murderers and rapists."

"Not even one innocent person?"

Edward shook his head. "No." He glanced at me and added, "I've come painfully close, but no, I've never murdered innocents." I knew he was thinking of that day in biology, when he had plotted the death of the entire class.

"So why did you stop? Why did you go back to animals?" Jake persisted. "If you were doing humanity a favor by getting rid of the criminals?"

"It gets old playing God." Eli chimed in. "Answering for myself, of course," he added, glancing at Edward. "You never know if one of those people might have turned their lives around if they had been given more time. A lot of them express remorse for their behavior when they're dying. And even criminals usually have mothers, fathers, siblings, children who will grieve over their death. Who am I, anyway, to be deciding who deserves an immediate death sentence?"

Jake looked to Edward, still waiting for his answer.

Edward nodded. "I agree completely with what Eli just said. I wasn't a superhero, Jake, I indulged myself when I had already been shown a better way, and I selected the victims who made me feel the least guilty."

Jake grinned. "Still, it's getting harder for me to remember why I used to think of you as a monster. How did I ever hate you so much?"

"We were both prejudiced," Edward responded, in a serious tone, then added with a teasing smile, "You're not so bad yourself, mutt, Nessie definitely could have done a lot worse."

"You know you love me." Jake wolfed down the rest of the food from his second tray and swapped plates with Renesmee to finish off her abundant leftovers.

"Would you two like to join us hunting tonight?" I asked Renesmee and Jacob. I doubted Jake would be very hungry considering the amount of cafeteria food he had just consumed, but Nessie hadn't hunted in a while and should be getting a little thirsty by now. We had planned for the four of us to hunt together this weekend but apparently we were moving it up to tonight, as Eli was obviously long overdue.

"Er, we have other plans already. Maybe next time." Renesmee answered. She placed her hand on Jake's face and he smiled brightly. She and Jake continued gazing into one another's eyes lovingly and I knew they were looking forward to having some alone time without us in the house. I was certain Edward was silently thanking me for the shield right now.

Eli noticed she was using her special talent. "Could you show me something?" he pleaded. "I'd love to see how that works."

"Of course." She got up and walked around the table so that she could reach his face.

She touched Eli's face and his eyes grew larger and his head jerked back slightly in surprise. Nearly everyone had a similar reaction the first time they experience her unique gift.

"What did she show you?" I was feeling a bit left out, as I knew Edward had seen her message in Eli's mind even though Nessie was still shielded.

"Mostly the same things Edward had already shown me - a history of her life - but from her perspective. It was much more vivid, though, and with no background noise. Bella, could you unshield her, so she can show you something now, so I can see how her gift works with me scanning her?"

I unshielded her, and she touched my face. I saw Edward's house in Chicago, growing larger as she pulled into the driveway. Then she showed me the inside of the house, the piano, her father's boyhood bedroom, the cemetery, and then some of the pictures we had brought back with us of Edward Sr. and Elizabeth Masen, and of Edward as a young human boy. She had enjoyed learning about her "other" set of grandparents.

"Amazing," Eli declared. "It looks just like when she touched my face, but I can hear some of her other thoughts along with it. So that was some more family history?"

"Yes," Edward answered. "That was my human home where I grew up in Chicago, the cemetery where my parents are buried, and pictures of my parents and me. We stopped by there for a visit on our way here when we moved here from Washington."

"That's nice that you have those connections to your human past - I don't have anything like that. Your present family is really quite amazing as well." He smiled at each of us as he looked around the table. "Do you think I could meet Carlisle and the rest of your family sometime?"

"Alice is already planning something. She called just before you and Bella came into the cafeteria."

"Just let me know when." Eli looked at his watch. "I'm going to have to go soon - I have another class in about ten minutes."

"So do we," I told him, speaking of Edward and myself. "What do you have next?"

"American History, and then Sociology tonight, and I have a Freshman Studies class that meets on Thursday nights."

"What is Freshman Studies, anyway?" I asked. I had signed up because it was a required course, but the description hadn't been very informative.

"We had that this morning," Renesmee answered. "It seems kind of like an English/Literature class, with some rather eclectic reading material. The class periods will be spent discussing what we've read, and there will be several writing assignments."

That didn't sound too bad, considering how much I loved to read.

"So, Bella, what classes do you have tonight? Do we have any more together?" Eli asked.

"I have American History, then Freshman Studies. Maybe we'll be in the same history class?" I was hoping he would be. I had a feeling that any classes he was in would not be dull.

"Matthews at 7pm."

"Same here." I smiled.

"Do you have another class tomorrow?"

"Yes, I have Introduction to Computer Science on Thursday nights. I've never done anything with computers except the basics - email, internet, writing papers for school - but I thought it would be something different." I wasn't really too sure I would like that class, but of the options available on Thursday nights it seemed like the best choice. I needed to step out of my comfort zone a bit if I was going to stick with my plan of sampling different subjects to find what really interests me.

Eli nodded. "What about you, Edward?"

"I'm a first year medical school student," he answered. "I have Biochemistry and Gross Anatomy tonight. I have Genetics on Tuesdays while you two will be in chem lab, and I've got Medical Ethics on Thursday nights."

"Wow, that sounds like quite a load," Eli observed.

"Not really. The ethics class is new but I've had all the others before. There will probably be a few new bits of information due to scientific advancements over the last thirty years, but I'm expecting at least ninety-five percent of it to be a review. I started out as a first-year again because we're planning to stay here for at least four years. At least it's better than posing as a high school freshman." He rolled his eyes.

Eli laughed. "You've done that before?"

"I was seventeen when I was changed. I can pass for older easier than younger, but I've done as young as fourteen before. We get some odd looks when we first go to enroll but we've never been questioned further after producing birth certificates. Alice and I started out as freshmen in Forks. We had been there two and a half years before I met Bella."

I checked my watch and rose from my chair. I would have to hurry to get to my next class on time. Everyone else stood as well, and Jake went to return his and Nessie's empty trays.

"We won't be back by the house until after we finish hunting," I told Nessie. "We should be back before you leave for class in the morning, but you've got the house to yourselves tonight."

"Thanks. See you in the morning!" she said as she rushed off in the direction Jake had gone to return his tray.

"Where should we meet when we all get out of class?" Eli asked. He seemed eager to try our way of hunting.

"The parking garage connected to the science building," Edward told him. "We came in Bella's red Ferrari. It's a two-seater, but you can drive and she can sit in my lap."

"See you then!" he answered. Then he and I headed to our history class while Edward went in the opposite direction to head to his first class.

* * *

**A/N: I've never been to Dartmouth, or to medical school, so if the courses listed are named differently than what they are called at Dartmouth, or if the references to buildings on campus don't match reality, that's why. If you've attended Dartmouth and notice anything I can fix easily, without affecting the story too much, please point it out and I can make corrections.  
**


	15. Plans

**A/N: I have made some minor changes to the class schedules described in the previous chapter, to make the schedules more realistic for night classes, instead of just moving a daytime-type schedule to evening hours. Thanks to Reese1603 for this suggestion. I am listing the revised schedules below, and I made some minor updates to the previous chapter over the weekend to correspond with these changes. None of these changes really affect anything else in the story but I'd like to make the schedules as believable as possible.  
**

**These schedules are probably still not completely in line with reality for current Dartmouth class scheduling practices (I'm not sure if they even really have night classes as I couldn't find any information online about them), but I think this will work for the purposes of this story. The 5pm class isn't technically a night class - it is the last time slot for the daytime classes so it is a shorter length and meets 3 times a week whereas the night classes meet once or twice a week. Dartmouth does actually have a 5 o'clock time slot for classes which meet MWF and are 65 minutes in length. Also, remember this story is set a few years in the future, so current Dartmouth scheduling practices may not be applicable by then anyway. ;)  
**

**Revised Schedules:**

**Bella: **

Chemistry 5pm MWF (65 min class)

Freshman Studies 7pm MW

American History 8:30pm MW

Chem Lab 6pm Tues (4 hrs)

Intro CS 6pm Thurs (3 hrs)

* * *

**Eli:**

Chemistry 5pm MWF (65 min class)

American History 7pm MW

Sociology 8:30pm MW

Chem Lab 6pm Tues (4 hrs)

Freshman Studies 6pm Thurs (2.5 hrs)

* * *

**Edward:**

Biochemistry 7pm MW

Gross Anatomy 8:30pm MW

Genetics 6pm Tues

Medical Ethics 6pm Thurs

* * *

**Jake & Nessie:**

Marketing 8am MWF

Freshman Studies 10am MWF

Introductory Psychology 5pm MWF

Microeconomics 8:30am TTh

* * *

Chapter 15: Plans

"Mmmmmmm, that smells great!" Jake came bounding down the stairs. Nessie was right behind him, though not quite as enthusiastic about the scents emanating from the kitchen.

I pulled the batch of blueberry muffins out of the oven, then scooped an enormous bacon and cheese omelet onto a plate for Jake, and placed a much smaller portion of plain scrambled eggs on a plate for Nessie.

"You didn't have to fix breakfast, Mom. I was going to do that." Nessie took both plates to the table and sat down next to Jake.

"You know I enjoy cooking. Even if it smells awful. It's one of the few things I was pretty good at as a human." I carried the pan of hot muffins over and placed it next to Jake's plate - he would be the only one eating any of those.

Edward glared at me briefly, reminding me he didn't approve of my tendency for self-deprecation. He finished pouring Jake's apple juice and brought it over along with a glass of water for Nessie, and then we joined them at the table.

"You make a mean omelet, Bells." Jake mumbled with his mouth full.

"So how did hunting go last night?" Renesmee asked, glancing from me to Edward.. "What did Eli think of our vegetarian diet?"

"Hunting went well," Edward answered. "We went to the White Mountain National Forest - there's an excellent moose population there. Eli seems committed to his new diet - I really think he's going to stick with it."

"He was a little confused at first when his thirst wasn't fully satisfied after draining an entire seven hundred pound moose," I added, "but even when we explained that our diet never fully satisfies the thirst, he was still enthusiastic about becoming a 'vegetarian.' He said the tradeoff was well-worth it. He seems really excited to realize he can hunt this way."

"Moose?" Renesmee wrinkled her nose. "They taste like deer...extra large deer. Is that the best we have around here?"

"Pretty much." I knew that wouldn't excite her; deer had to be her least favorite, and the fact that the "portion sizes" were extra-large didn't make it any more appealing.

"They're not the best," agreed Edward, "but they're plentiful. There are supposed to be some black bear in that forest too, but we didn't come across any during our quick hunt last night. We're planning a trip in a couple weeks to go someplace where we can find large predators...we assured Eli they would be a little more satisfying. You might want to come with us."

"Definitely."

"How long until his eyes turn yellow?" Jacob asked between bites.

"They're already turning. They're kind of a dark amber now, with just a hint of orange," I explained.

"There was very little human blood left in his system," Edward added. "It had been several weeks since he had fed. I'm surprised he was able to spend so much time in enclosed spaces with humans yesterday - his control is really remarkable."

"Did he tell you any more about himself?" Renesmee asked. "Like his past, or why he's attending college? We gave him our life histories yesterday but he didn't give out much personal information." She took a sip of her water.

"Yes, we learned quite a bit about him," I told her. "He was changed in 1947, when he was twenty-six years old. He was an attorney, and he was very successful in the courtroom for the few months that he got to practice before he was changed. It seems his talent was fairly strong when he was human. He couldn't read exact thoughts, but he had sort of a sixth sense about what questions to ask people to get the answers he needed. It came in really handy when questioning people on the witness stand. He rarely ever lost a case."

Jacob laughed. "Sounds like a good career choice for a mind-reader. Why haven't you ever done that, Edward?"

"Several reasons: I never had any interest in studying law, I don't really look old enough to be an attorney, and I would be risking exposure if I used my talent like that with human audiences."

"You're no fun," Jacob complained. "If Eli could get away with it as a human, you could get away with it now."

Edward just shook his head.

"So why is Eli going to college?" Nessie asked again, stabbing the last of her egg and popping it into her mouth..

"We didn't really talk about that," I told her, looking to Edward for help. Maybe he heard something in his mind?

Edward shook his head in agreement. "We didn't ask him, but I think it's just something to do. He's attended college before, a semester here and there, but I don't think he's ever finished out a degree. He seems to enjoy being around people, and likes the challenge involved in fitting in with humans."

"He didn't seem to mind attracting attention in class," I noted. "He said something in front of the entire class about wanting to get to know me. I don't think he meant it that way, but the rest of the class seemed to think he was flirting."

Edward's eyes darkened briefly. "He did mean it that way, but he stopped thinking of you like that as soon as you said you were married, so I can't hold it against him. I'd have had the same thoughts if I'd been in his place. The human males, however..." He emitted a low growl.

I laughed and reached for his hand under the table. "Edward, don't worry about the humans. None of them even tried to talk to me. They can't hurt me, and I'm already yours. Relax."

He took a deep breath and exhaled. "I know. But I still don't like their thoughts."

"And what did the girls in your class think of you?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes. "I'd rather not think about that either. I tuned them out as much as possible."

"I won't attack your classmates if you don't attack mine," I bargained, laughing.

"Fair enough."

"Were you listening in on our class too?" Jake asked, reaching for his fifth muffin. He hated being eavesdropped on, but I knew he must also be curious to know what thoughts the other students were having about his wife.

"I was here at the house during your morning classes, so I wasn't listening then. During the five o'clock class, I was mostly focused on Eli, but I did check in on Nessie briefly. You two were very obviously together, so that curbed a lot of the thoughts. I'm glad you two have all your classes together, at least for this first term."

"What else did you learn about Eli last night?" Nessie asked. "Who changed him? Does he have a family - is he part of a coven? Where does he live?"

"He's a nomad and travels alone." Edward took the empty dishes from the table and put them in the dishwasher. "He's making use of a vacant apartment on the outskirts of town but spends most of his time outdoors. He was changed by a woman named Cora, but he only stayed with her for about five years before venturing out on his own. She had hoped he would become her mate, but he was never interested in her in that way."

"Kind of like you and Aunt Rose?" Nessie asked with a grin. She and Jake had thought it was hilarious when Emmett had let it slip a few years ago that Carlisle had originally hoped Rosalie and Edward would be a couple.

"Not exactly. Rose didn't change me, and I didn't change her, and she was never interested in me in that way either. But yes, I think he was probably about as attracted to Cora as I was to Rosalie. When you can hear every thought that goes through a person's mind..." He shook his head. "At first he hated her for taking his life, which had been going quite well, and he knew her motivations were entirely selfish so that didn't help things any. He stayed with her for a while and she helped him through the newborn years. He made peace with her, but her thoughts about him made him uncomfortable and he eventually left. He's still in touch with her, but doesn't visit her often, maybe once every few years. He seems to regard her as an overbearing older sister."

"Who has a crush on him." Jake chuckled.

"Right." Edward grinned briefly, despite himself.

"So a more accurate comparison might be you and Tanya - your cousin who had the hots for you." He laughed a little louder.

Edward frowned and looked a bit annoyed, but still considered the similarities and answered. "I suppose so, although, again, she didn't change me. And I wasn't created for her. But I imagine the discomfort with the lustful thoughts was probably similar."

"Did he tell you anything about how Cora chose him?" I asked. All of this information about his relationship with Cora must have come from one of their mental conversations, because it was new to me as well. "Did she know him and fall in love with him while he was still human?"

"No, she didn't know him personally beforehand. She had selected him because of a newspaper article praising his success in the courtroom, which mentioned his uncanny ability to get witnesses to crack on the stand. She suspected he would be talented, and of course it turned out she was right. She was actually trying for a mindreader because she thought it would be romantic to have someone who could respond to her thoughts and desires without even needing to verbalize them. Her plan obviously backfired."

"That's really interesting," I mused. "Have you ever heard of any other vampires who were created with the goal of producing a particular talent?"

"I don't know of any personally," Edward answered, "but I know it happens. Jasper has mentioned a few he knew in the southern wars. Maria was rather selective in who she recruited for her ranks. And I'm sure you remember Aro's reaction to your ability to block him when you were human - he was very interested in how talented you would be as a vampire. I wouldn't be surprised if the Volturi have turned people specifically for their talent. I don't know the histories of all the guard members, though - I'm just speculating."

I wondered how many of the guard members might have been changed because of their potential talent. And how many might have been created and then destroyed because they didn't want to serve in the guard or because they tried to use their talent against the Volturi, or because their talent turned out to be something that wasn't expected or desired. It seemed like creating talented vampires would be a dangerous business, since the talents were seldom predictable and could be quite powerful. Talented newborns would be formidable opponents if they became angry with their creators.

It was interesting to me that someone would have intentionally desired a mindreader as a mate, because as much as I loved Edward I knew it would have made our relationship more difficult or even impossible if he could have seen and heard everything in my head. I valued my own mental privacy so much I couldn't understand why someone would try to seek out a mate who could give them no privacy at all, even in their own mind. Also, I did not miss the irony that the only person Edward had ever been attracted to romantically was the one person whose mind he could _not_ read.

It was also interesting to me that Eli could listen only when he wanted to. I knew Edward must be very envious of that aspect of his ability. I wondered what he had heard in Edward's mind, other than the things Edward was intentionally sharing with him. Edward can hear my mind whenever I let him, but it's impossible for me to hear his. I would have to ask Eli what it's like being inside Edward's head. I was glad Eli was turning out to be a friend. It was going to be nice having a friend at school that we don't have to pretend around.

"So what did you two think of Eli?" I asked Nessie and Jake.

"He seemed nice enough to me." Nessie shrugged.

"Well, I'm cool with him, as long as he sticks to the diet," Jake picked up his and Nessie's backpacks. "We'd better be getting to class now. We plan to stay on campus after class for lunch, and then work on some flyers to advertise Nessie's babysitting services. We're going to target people taking night classes, and the surrounding community. We probably won't be back by the house until later in the afternoon."

"You should advertise online, too," Edward told them. "There are several subdivisions between here and campus. They may have their own neighborhood websites or mailing lists."

"Yeah, thanks, I'll check into that." Jake held the door open for Nessie.

"Bye, Dad. Bye, Mom. We'll see you later."

The front door clicked shut, and I got up to put away the leftover muffins and clean the skillet and muffin pan.

I picked up the pan of muffins, and felt Edward's hands reach around from behind me to gently pull back my hair, his lips pressing softly to my neck.

"Mmmmm..." I closed my eyes and tilted my head to the left, encouraging him to continue.

His lips slowly moved up and down my neck, teasing me a bit before escalating to warm open-mouthed kisses that left my neck damp with his venom. "What were you planning to do this morning?" He breathed against my neck, sending chills down my spine. "Did you have anything in mind?"

"I was going to do dishes and check my email, but I think my plans just changed..." I murmured, inhaling deeply and savoring his scent.

"You really should check your email...You haven't checked it since we got here, have you?" His lips moved to my ear.

"Not since we were in La Push. I was thinking Charlie or Renée might have emailed by now, but they can wait." I put down the pan of muffins, which I had nearly forgotten was still in my hand, and turned to face him. "Want to go upstairs?" I felt guilty that I hadn't checked for Charlie's or Renée's emails yet, but I could do that later. And Edward was infinitely more appealing than dirty dishes - those could definitely wait until later.

He stepped back slightly but rested his hands on my waist. "I'll clean up the kitchen while you check your email, then we'll pick up where we left off. How does that sound?"

Edward was going to finish the dishes, my email guilt would be gone, and I would have Edward kissing my neck again in a few minutes? "It sounds like you're the most wonderful husband in the world." I managed to land a kiss on his mouth before he stepped back, laughing.

"Go check your email. Your parents are probably getting worried that you're not responding."

I knew he was right. I had left Charlie a message on his answering machine letting him know we had arrived safely in Hanover, but otherwise I hadn't communicated with my parents since before we moved. Charlie didn't like talking on the phone much, so the year we moved to Wisconsin we had gotten him and Sue a new computer for Christmas, and showed him how to use email. I had been a little surprised he had been willing to learn, but he seemed to enjoy email, especially when he realized we could send him pictures and videos of little Renesmee that way.

I settled into my chair in my office and powered on the computer, thankful that Alice or Jasper had hooked it all up for me. I was sure I could have figured it out, but it was one less thing to worry about.

Eighty-seven new emails. Most of it was junk, so I scanned through the list and quickly located the ones I had been expecting from Charlie and Renée. I read them in order from oldest to newest.

* * *

_September 14, 2016 2:36:42 PM_

_To: Bella Cullen_

_From: Ren__é__e Dwyer_

_Bella,_

_When did you say you were moving? That's this month, right? Let me know when you get moved in. I want to hear all about the new house and how you are liking college! Are Edward's sister and her new husband going to Dartmouth too? She seems so attached to you and Edward. She is such a sweet girl._

_Oh, honey, I am so excited! I am in a cake decorating class now. I just made the cutest cake, with two little clowns on top. I'll have to send you a picture if I can get Phil to get the pictures off the camera for me._

_Would it be okay if I come visit you next month? I haven't seen you in so long! The playoffs are over now and Phil has some free weekends coming up so he can come with me. I was thinking the weekend of October 15. Would that work for you?_

_Love you bunches,_

_Mom_

* * *

_September 17, 2016 07:30:25 PM_

_To: Bella Cullen_

_From: Charles Swan_

_Hey, Bells, I got your message. You guys made good time getting there. I guess that insomnia problem makes travel easier. Did you get to stop in Chicago?_

_I got the garage cleaned out and the Volvo is parked in there now. I haven't had much chance to drive it yet but we plan to take it to Seattle this weekend._

_I miss you guys already. Sue and I were thinking we could go visit you next month, if that would be okay with you, maybe the 2nd or 3rd weekend of October. I'd like to see where you live. How are you liking the new house? Say hi to Edward for me._

_Love,_

_Dad_

* * *

_September 18, 2016 09:16:14 AM_

_To: Bella Cullen_

_From: Ren__é__e Dwyer_

_Bella,_

_Did you get my email on Wednesday? Is everything okay? Please call or write back soon._

_Mom_

* * *

_September 20, 2016 07:43:59 AM_

_To: Bella Cullen_

_From: Ren__é__e Dwyer_

_Bella,_

_Did you get my last two emails? You're starting to worry me. You usually reply within a day or two. Please let me know everything's okay. Please?_

_Love,_

_Mom_

* * *

_September 21, 2016 09:52:43 PM_

_To: Bella Cullen_

_From: Ren__é__e Dwyer_

_Okay, now you're not answering your cell phone. I'm going to call Charlie now and see if he can run over and check on you._

* * *

_September 21, 2016 10:06:28 PM_

_To: Bella Cullen_

_From: Charles Swan_

_Bella, please call your mother, she's worried about you because you haven't answered her email. I told her I had a phone message from you on Saturday and that you just moved and might not have your computer hooked up yet. I know you're fine but please let me know when you get this._

_Dad_

* * *

Yes, they were definitely worried. I should have checked my email as soon as we moved in. I was glad I had remembered to leave Charlie that voice mail.

So both of my parents wanted to come the middle of next month. Probably best to schedule them for separate weekends. They all got along with one another fine, including Sue and Phil, and we had plenty room, but I suspected Charlie would have more questions for me about our recent revelation, and he might have trouble keeping a straight face if Renée made reference to our surgeries or medications. Also, I didn't want Nessie spending her weekend with Charlie pretending he was her sister-in-law's father instead of her grandpa.

I felt Edward's hands on my shoulders and turned my head slightly to smile up at him as he started massaging my shoulders.

"Don't let me distract you." He flashed his crooked grin, and then withdrew his hands so that I could concentrate on the computer. "I'm finished in the kitchen. Anything interesting in your email?"

"Mom and Dad both want to come visit next month. I thought we could send Dad and Sue airline tickets for the second weekend, and we could have Mom and Phil come the third weekend. What do you think?"

"Sounds great. We haven't seen Renée since Mother's Day. Don't forget to have her bring your old photos so we can make copies."

I sent quick replies to Charlie and Renée, letting them know the house was great, college was great, and I would take care of the travel arrangements for their visit. I could send them longer, more personal replies later.

I started scrolling through the rest of the email in my inbox, deleting the junk, and came across one more email that wasn't spam. I had almost deleted the email from "Newton, Michael J." with the subject of "Hi." How had Mike gotten my email address? Angela was the only one from high school I had kept in touch with via email, and I knew she wouldn't have given it to him.

* * *

_September 21, 2016 07:45:13 PM_

_To: Bella Cullen_

_From: Michael J. Newton_

_Bella,_

_Hey! How are you? I was in Forks this past weekend and saw your dad at my parents' store buying some fishing equipment. When I asked about you he seemed to be in a big hurry but I managed to talk him into giving me your email address. I haven't heard from you in forever and just wondered how you are doing. I was disappointed you weren't able to make it to our ten year class reunion this summer. I hope you received an invitation; I know Lauren mentioned the committee wasn't able to track down everyone's current addresses. Don't worry though, I won't give her your email address; I know you two never really got along. ;)_

_Are you and Edward still together? Still in Alaska? I heard you two were adopting his niece right after you married. Was that true? It's hard to imagine you as a mother but we all grow and change. Do you have kids of your own now, too?_

_I'm not sure if you heard, I married my college sweetheart right before we both started law school. It only lasted four years; the divorce was final back in March. Heather just decided she wanted out, and to this day I don't think I know the real reason why. Thankfully we didn't have any children to get caught up in that mess. It's hard getting back into the dating scene after all this time, but enough about me._

_Jessica was at the reunion. She's a math teacher at Forks High School now. Can you believe it? She always hated math. Lauren's a real estate agent in Portland, Tyler is a football coach for a high school in Seattle, and Eric lives in California now and develops video games. Angela and Ben are working with a church in Port Angeles with their youth ministry. I guess that's about it for our group. What are the Cullens up to now? I haven't seen any of them since your wedding._

_Hope to hear from you soon._

_Mike_

_Michael J. Newton, Attorney at Law_

_Atkins Rogers Gordon, LLC_

_NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission is for the use of the named individual or entity to which it is directed and may contain information that is privileged or confidential. It is not to be transmitted to or received by anyone other than the named addressee (or a person authorized to deliver it to the named addressee). It is not to be copied or forwarded to any unauthorized persons. If you have received this electronic mail transmission in error, delete it from your system without copying or forwarding it, and notify the sender of the error by replying via email or by calling Atkins Rogers Gordon LLC at (555) 651-7200 (collect), so that our address record can be corrected._

_IRS Circular 230 disclosure: To ensure compliance with requirements imposed by the IRS, we inform you that any tax advice contained in this communication (including any attachments) was not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (i) avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any transaction or matter addressed herein._

* * *

Edward had started growling as soon as I opened the email.

"Edward, please calm down. At least you don't have to hear his thoughts along with what he wrote."

"That's true, although I spent enough time around him in high school that I know what his thoughts would be."

"It's been ten years, Edward. He's an adult now. He's not a hormone-crazed teenager anymore. He's a twenty-eight year old divorced attorney emailing old friends out of boredom. I feel sorry for him."

"Men's thoughts about beautiful women don't change much as they age. If anything, his fantasies about you would be more graphic now that he's sexually experienced. I can't believe Charlie gave him your real email address."

I rolled my eyes. "He's just asking how we're doing. I guess Dad didn't want to answer any of Mike's questions about us himself, and probably thought it would be best if he let us give Mike whatever story we wanted. It's not a big deal - it's a harmless email."

"Harmless?" He growled again. "'Are you and Edward still together?', 'I was disappointed you weren't able to make it', 'It's hard getting back into the dating scene', 'Hope to hear from you soon.'" He did a perfect impression of Mike's voice, and then roared, "He's hitting on my wife!"

"I'll just write back and let him know I'm still happily married. You can help me with the reply, okay?" I rubbed his arm soothingly and he made an effort to unclench his fists.

"Honestly I'd rather you not respond at all, but I guess we should," he reluctantly agreed. "We don't want him harassing Charlie for information about us."

* * *

_September 22, 2016 08:42:16 AM_

_To: Michael J. Newton_

_From: Bella Cullen_

_Mike,_

_It is nice to hear from you. Yes, Edward and I are still very happily married. I love him more every day - marrying him was the best decision I ever made. Yes, we did legally adopt his niece after the tragic death of his biological sister. Nessie is ten years old now and is such a joy, and we do consider her our own. We do not have any additional children. We took a few years to travel after finishing college, and Edward is currently in medical school here in Maryland. I stay home with our daughter and home school her._

_I am sorry to hear about your divorce. I know that must be hard. It sounds like you have a good career - congratulations on becoming an attorney. _

_I did hear about the class reunion. The invitation was sent to Charlie's house and he told us about it, but we already had plans to vacation in France that week. Thanks for the updates on our friends. I had wondered about them from time to time. It is good to hear they are all doing well._

_Say hi to your parents for me. I hope they are doing well._

_Take care,_

_Bella Cullen_

* * *

Edward wasn't too happy about the "It is nice to hear from you" but I insisted we keep it for the sake of politeness. I felt bad rubbing my marital happiness in his face when he just told me he had recently gone through a probably painful divorce, but Edward was right, Mike needed to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was not interested in hooking up with him.

"Does it meet your approval now?" I asked, after adding my last name to my signature at his insistence. "Aside from the first sentence?"

"Yes, it's fine. You should probably copy Charlie so he'll know what story we gave Mike." Edward always thought of everything. I added Charlie to the blind carbon copy field and hit 'Send'.

I went through the rest of my email and finished deleting the junk. Another email from Renée came in while I was replying to Mike, expressing her excitement about the upcoming visit and demanding more details about the house and my college classes. I would reply to her again later.

"Now, I think you said something earlier about picking up where we left off?"

He began once again covering my neck in kisses. "I believe we were right..about...here..." He mumbled into my neck between kisses. I turned and wrapped my arms around his neck and he scooped me up and carried me to our room, still kissing my neck.

As he placed me gently on the bed, I looked into his golden eyes, appreciating their beauty, and allowing myself to become a bit dazzled. His eyes were lightened from our hunt last night, and seemed to glow in the light that was streaming in from the window. "You know, I really meant what I said to Mike."

"Which part?" He seemed uncertain as to whether he would like my answer, but kept his eyes locked on mine. I wondered if he might be as dazzled by my eyes as I was by his right now?

I struggled for a moment to remember what I was going to say. "Well, I meant everything I told him about you, but in particular I was thinking about the part where I said I love you more every day. I'm not sure how that's even possible, but it's really true." My arms were still locked around his neck and he was leaning over me as I lay on our bed.

As he lowered his face toward mine to kiss me, I thought about how happy I was that he was mine and that we had this time to be alone together. I returned the kiss passionately, thrilling to the sensation of his perfect lips moving against mine. His hands began roaming over my body as we kissed. I would never tire of his touch; I only craved it more and more. I moved my hands to his back and pulled him closer, eliminating the space remaining between us, and his mouth moved back to my neck. I tried to move my shield aside so he could hear how much I was enjoying his affections, but wasn't able to maintain my concentration more than a couple seconds, as his kisses became even more passionate during the short time that my shield was down.

"I love you so much," his velvety voice murmured in my ear, and I felt chills go down my spine again. He pulled me even closer and rolled both of us so that he was beneath me.

Then he chuckled lightly, which confused me. What could possibly be funny?

"What?" I asked.

"I think if we're going to get any closer to each other, we're going to have to take our clothes off first." He gave me his trademark lopsided grin.

"You know, you're right," I smiled back at him. "I think we_ could _get a bit closer if this fabric wasn't in the way."

* * *

I was snuggled up with Edward, enjoying his closeness, thinking how everything with our life here was going so smoothly. I loved having Nessie living with us again and being able to fix breakfast for her and Jake, and I also loved my time alone with Edward like this morning...which had extended into this afternoon. We both knew Jake and Nessie would be home soon but I was perfectly content right where I was, with Edward's arms around me - I couldn't bring myself to move away from his embrace.

It felt like such a nice balance in our lives right now. I got to see my daughter every day and spend lots of quality time with my husband, The rest of the Cullen family was close by, and my human parents would be visiting next month. My classes seemed interesting, but weren't consuming too much of my time yet. I felt like I was actually going to learn something from them, unlike Edward, who I knew was mainly going through the motions for the sake of appearance just like high school. At least he might be able to have some intelligent discussions with his peers and professors in this setting, and the thoughts of our fellow students would hopefully be a bit more mature than what he had to endure in high school. He seemed happier here than he had been when we were in La Push. Not that he was unhappy there, but I knew he had missed his family, and seeing our nine-year-old daughter marry and leave home - even if they lived only a few miles from our house - had been an emotional time for both of us..

"I don't want to let you go, but they're almost home." Edward gently kissed me on the lips once more, interrupting my random thoughts, and we hurried to get dressed. We made the bed and I soon heard the Vanquish pulling into the garage.

We went downstairs to greet them as they came in.

"How was class?" I asked. I wondered briefly what we would say if they asked what we did while they were gone. They probably had a pretty good idea though, since they knew we were out hunting with Eli all night, so it was unlikely they would ask. I stifled a grin as I remembered the time Jake had asked me what we did with all the extra time afforded us by our lack of sleep. The look on his face had been priceless when he fully grasped that we could - and did - literally make love all night long.

"Class was fine," Renesmee answered. "We got the flyers made to advertise my babysitting, and some for my tutoring services, and got them posted in some good places near campus. I met one lady who took one of my babysitting ads with her and said she would probably be giving me a call soon. She had her two kids with her, four-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. They were so cute! I hope she really calls." She looked as if she suddenly remembered something, and her expression shifted to one of nervousness. "I kind of told her I would be able to watch them here - she's trying to plan a party at her house and is probably going to need someone to keep them overnight. I hope that's okay?" She looked back and forth between Edward and me.

I certainly didn't mind, but Edward looked hesitant. I knew he was worried about the danger to the children, sleeping over at a house of vampires, and Nessie knew her father well, hence her nervousness.

"Edward, it's no more dangerous than us going to class every day," I told him. "None of us, not even you, has ever lost control and hurt anyone accidentally. It will be fine."

"All right," he relented. "Just make sure your mother and I know ahead of time when to expect them here."

"Thanks, Dad!" She hugged him enthusiastically. "She may not even call, but I have a good feeling about her. She could tell her kids really liked me."

"She'll call." Jake reassured her. "I have a feeling she may become a frequent customer."

"Oh, we saw some announcements about campus events that were posted where we put up our flyers." Renesmee was practically bouncing with excitement. "There's a concert being put on by the music students next month I thought we might all want to go to. And Dad, there's a lecture with guest speakers from some European museums that's being sponsored by the anthropology department. The speakers are all museum directors. I thought you and Grandpa might be interested in that - it's supposed to focus on the study of antiquities. There's also a free movie being shown on campus the third Friday of each month. Oh, and Mom, the drama department is planning a performance of Romeo and Juliet. We have to go to that too!"

"We can probably do that," I smiled. I loved seeing how excited she was about participating in campus life. "I would never pass up a good performance of Romeo and Juliet."

"Did it say who the speakers are for the anthropology lecture?" Edward asked. Ancient history and collections of antiquities were more within the realm of Carlisle's interests than Edward's, but I remembered him telling me how he had accompanied Carlisle on a tour of museums around the world a number of years before we met.

"Um..." She furrowed her brow and looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember. She didn't have perfect recall like us, but it was close - her memory far surpassed that of humans. She probably hadn't paid much attention to the names of the lecturers, though, so I was a bit surprised when started naming them. "Dr. Paul A. Bohacz, Dr. Aleksey J. Georgiadis, and Dr. Antonio R. Ogianesi." Then she spelled each of the surnames, since she wasn't certain of the pronunciations.

"I don't recognize any of them," Edward concluded. "Although it _has_ been seventeen years since I went on that tour with Carlisle. I suppose most of the museums would have new directors by now. That's good - no chance of them recognizing us if we go to the lecture. I'll have to let Carlisle know. He'll probably want to go."

I knew Edward would probably want to go to the music concert too, but we would probably pass on the free movies. We would both rather watch movies snuggled up together in our living room than in an auditorium with a bunch of humans around us.

"Would you believe we already have a test planned for next week?" Jake complained.

"What class?" I asked.

"Microeconomics. There are some people getting study groups together - we're planning to meet with one on Monday night to start studying for the test. This girl named Chloe invited some of us over to her room to study. Actually she just invited Nessie, but we're a package deal." He grinned.

"Oh, she doesn't mind you coming. She said it was fine and I could tell she meant it," Nessie insisted. "She seems so nice! It's fun to meet some people who are sort of my age. I think the study group is going to be fun."

"Well, a study session for microeconomics doesn't sound all that exciting to me," I teased, "but I'm glad you're making some friends here." I suspected she was going to make a lot of new friends, assuming she and Jake didn't stay too caught up in their own little bubble. She was so much more outgoing than me, and she blended in with humans more easily.

"Would it be okay if we offer to have the next study session here?" She looked hopeful, probably encouraged by our agreement to allow her to babysit here at the house. After all, if we'd let her bring innocent preschoolers over, why not our college classmates who are already exposed to us in class anyway?

"Yes, that will be fine," Edward answered. "You can invite whomever you want from school. You don't need to ask permission first, but I would appreciate it if you could just let us know when to expect human visitors."

"Thanks, Dad!"

"We have a bit of news," I announced.

Jake and Nessie both looked at me expectantly.

"I got caught up on my email while you guys were gone, and I learned Charlie and Sue are planning to come visit the weekend of October the eighth, and Renée and Phil will be coming the following weekend."

"That's great!" Nessie squealed. "I haven't seen Grandma Renée in months! I can't wait to see Grandpa Charlie either - I knew he wouldn't stay away long!"

"How's Charlie liking the Volvo?" Jake asked.

"He hasn't driven it yet, but he said they're going to drive it to Seattle soon."

"Did they say anything else?" Nessie asked.

"Renée is taking a cake decorating class. Something about a cake with clowns on it."

"Yuck." She giggled. "I hope she doesn't bring any for us to eat."

"Speak for yourself," Jake laughed. "I wouldn't mind eating some clown cake. I don't turn down food! Speaking of food... I'm getting kind of hungry. I think I'll go see what I can find in the kitchen."

"I'll help." Nessie followed him.

We had two hours before our evening classes started, and Edward had some things he wanted to do in his office, so I went back to my computer as well.

I sent Renée a more detailed description of the house and how Alice had decorated it for us, told her a little about our classes, and explained that Nessie and Jake were indeed attending Dartmouth and were living with us temporarily. I also remembered to ask her to bring our old family photos so I could scan them.

Then I sent another email to Charlie, telling him a little about our Chicago trip, making it sound shorter than it actually was, since he already seemed suspicious of how quickly we arrived in Hanover, and then I told him a little about the house, and urged him to please drive and enjoy the Volvo.

Composing the detailed emails took longer than I expected, and by the time I finished, Edward was waiting on me to go to our night classes.

Soon Edward and I were in my car heading to campus. I was a little nervous about this class, computer science, since it was really different from anything I'd studied before, but that was one of my goals for college - to branch out and get some experience in new subjects. Who knows, it might actually be fun. I was probably kidding myself, though - I would probably end up needing Edward or Jasper to help me through the assignments. Edward had his Medical Ethics class tonight, which he seemed relatively excited about, since it was a class he actually hadn't taken before, and it seemed to have the potential for some interesting discussions.

We talked some more about Eli during our short drive to campus, and at one point I commented on how I had been kind of surprised at how calmly he accepted Eli's presence when we first met. "You heard him coming and stayed in the library and then went to wait for us in the cafeteria? I'm surprised you didn't come stand guard outside my classroom at the first sign of him!"

Edward looked a little uncomfortable. "I was trying not to be too overprotective..."

I looked at him and waited, as it seemed there was more he wasn't sharing.

He returned my gaze and his expression shifted and I could tell he was giving in. I felt relieved I wasn't going to have to try to drag it out of him.

"I had Alice watching for him. She called me right after I got to the library and let me know she had a vision of him walking into your class and sitting in the front row. Apparently he hadn't decided if he was attending the class or not until he saw that it was cloudy that day. I listened for him and found him about three miles from campus, on his way to class. His thoughts were all pleasant and non-threatening. He was enjoying his run through the woods and wondering how many days of class he would end up missing due to the sun. When he first noticed you and was attracted to you, I got angry and started walking toward your building. Alice called and said she had seen us all sitting around a cafeteria table having a friendly chat but it had just changed to a vision of me fighting him behind the science building. I decided to go back to the library and the vision of the friendly gathering in the cafeteria returned, so I stayed in the library until it was nearly time to meet you. I stayed tuned into his mind and saw that you were handling things just fine on your own."

I was confused. He had Alice watching for him? Did that mean he was expecting him? He knew we were going to meet another vampire on campus and hadn't warned me?

When I didn't say anything at first, he misinterpreted my expression and thought I was upset he had planned to rescue me. "So I guess I was still a bit overprotective after all.. I'm sorry, Bella. I should have trusted you more - I know you can take care of yourself but sometimes it's so hard to not jump in and try to help you."

"That's not what I was thinking about. I understand your reaction to his initial thoughts about me, and I'm glad Alice was watching since that helped you avoid an unnecessary confrontation, but Edward, why was she watching? Did you already know there was a vampire on campus? You knew and hadn't warned me? I don't understand."

He grimaced and I knew I wasn't going to like this explanation. "Alice caught his scent near campus when she was here setting up the house, but she didn't have any visions about him until he was actually on his way to class. We didn't know until then whether it was someone enrolled at the school or just someone passing by. I didn't want to worry you."

No, I didn't like that explanation at all. "You should have warned me. You know I don't like being kept in the dark."

"I'm sorry. I did warn you that it's not too unusual to encounter our kind at the Ivy League schools. I wouldn't have let you go to class alone if I had felt there was any real danger."

"What about Renesmee and Jacob? They went to class yesterday morning without us - you weren't even close enough to listen for threats on campus. What if Eli had turned out to be unfriendly?"

"I talked to Jacob. He was going to call me if he detected the scent anywhere. He checked things out on Tuesday and all he found was the same old trail Alice had come across. Jake would have called me and brought Nessie home if he had encountered any evidence of a vampire on campus yesterday morning. His first reaction was that he could protect Nessie if necessary, but I convinced him it would be best to avoid any confrontation in front of humans. I actually trust Jake not to phase in front of people, but I told him we didn't know if the vampire would have the same level of control to not attack."

"Nessie didn't know either?"

"No, we didn't want to worry either of you."

"What if it had been someone sent by the Volturi?"

"That's why Alice and I were watching and listening so closely."

"I could have stood outside their building and kept my shield over them."

"It wouldn't have stopped a physical attack, and again, I didn't want to worry you." He pulled up at the computer science building and I silently gathered my things for class. "Bella, I'm really sorry. You're right, I should have told you. Please don't go to class angry. Can you forgive me?"

I looked into his eyes and he did look truly remorseful. "Yes, I forgive you. But the next time you have information you don't want to worry me with, please trust me enough to share it with me anyway, okay?"

He nodded. "I will." He breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Bella."

I had let him off the hook pretty easy, and he knew it, but there was nothing to be gained by staying upset with him.

He came around to open my door and helped me out of the car. Honestly, this particular bit of chivalry felt silly and outdated in our current setting on a modern college campus, but I continued to humor him.

"Good luck with your class." Edward grinned at me, changing the subject and obviously trying to lighten the mood. He knew I would be out of my element in this subject.

"Thanks, I'll need it." I smiled and kissed him goodbye before heading to my class, my thoughts still on our conversation. This wasn't the first time he had kept something from me, and I doubted it would be the last, no matter how strong his current intentions not to make the same mistake again. Yes, I forgave him. I always would. But I couldn't help but wonder, how many other things has he been keeping from me because he doesn't want me to worry?


	16. Lab

Chapter 16: Lab

I looked around as I sat in the passenger's seat, admiring the interior of my new-to-me vehicle once again, as Edward and I went to pick up Eli for class. It was a sunny day, and he had been planning to arrive late for chemistry lab until we called him and told him we could pick him up since we had tinted windows, and could park in the parking garage, thus avoiding the sun.

The vehicle was three years old, so it didn't have that new car smell, but it was in excellent condition, and I was pleased that Edward had not made one negative remark about it. I knew it was not what he would have chosen had he been the one doing the shopping, but he seemed to approve. It was about time we had a normal vehicle, one that more than two people could ride in, and which didn't leave people drooling whenever we pulled out of a parking lot. I had taken care of the purchase on Saturday, surprising Edward. I don't think he thought I'd really go vehicle shopping by myself. I smiled as I remembered his reaction.

* * *

_"You bought this?" Edward asked, his brows raised in surprise._

_I nodded and smiled smugly._

_"So how did you decide on a Toyota Sequoia?"_

_"I searched an auto sales website, and narrowed the search to eight-passenger vehicles, and then looked for one that had a familiar-sounding name."_

_He had burst out laughing, and then quickly apologized. "I'm sorry, Bella, I didn't mean to laugh at you, it's just an unusual method of making this type of decision. You might want to avoid sharing your methodology with Rosalie."_

_I ignored the laughter. At least he hadn't criticized the vehicle itself. "Well, the two that sounded the most familiar were the Sequoia and the Suburban, and the Suburban reminds me of - "_

_"Newton." Edward finished for me, interrupting. He rolled his eyes. "Okay, I see why the Sequoia was the more appealing of the two."_

_"So then I did a search for a black Sequoia no more than five years old near our zip code, with all the features I wanted, like leather seats and power windows."_

_"Oh, so you've gotten used to leather seats and power windows?" He smirked._

_"Hey, I loved that truck!" I protested. "I guess I have become a bit spoiled, but mainly I wanted to be sure to get all the features _you're_ accustomed to. Besides, we may have humans riding with us occasionally, like Renesmee's friends or kids she's babysitting, and leather seats should be easier to clean and won't hold the scent as long."_

_"Well, regardless of your selection method, I think this will be a good family vehicle. I'm impressed, love."_

* * *

I was really happy he approved. I had half-expected that he would complain about the speed (or rather the lack thereof), or the fact that it was not brand new, or some other aspect I wasn't even aware of, but he hadn't. He couldn't deny that we were in need of a multi-passenger "blending-in" vehicle.

It was odd how easily I had spent forty grand on a used car. After realizing how much Edward had spent on _his_ new car, this actually felt like a fairly minor purchase. I guess that's what happens when you've lived with the Cullens for ten years. Buying a fourth car really wasn't excessive at all, I told myself. This particular vehicle was something an average family might own, though admittedly the average family would probably need to finance it and would not already own three other extravagant cars. However, no one would know whether it was financed or not, and not everyone would be aware of how many vehicles we owned. Driving the Sequoia would allow us to look more average, more normal, and it was so much more functional than any of our other vehicles.

Rosalie and Emmett had come over for the weekend and Edward had been watching Rose put the finishing touches on the enhancements she was making to his Veyron so he hadn't paid too much attention when I had excused myself from the house on Saturday morning, claiming I had some errands to run.

I had called ahead to the dealership, and they had it ready for me to test drive when I arrived. When I showed up and they saw I was a teenager they were hesitant to let me actually test drive it until they saw the type of credit card I had. Once the sales people realized I was seriously planning to purchase a vehicle, and had the means to do so, they were really quite helpful.

After completing all the paperwork at the dealership, I had taken it to be detailed and to have the windows tinted, and it was delivered to our house late Saturday evening. The look of surprise on Edward's face had been priceless.

We pulled into the parking lot of the abandoned apartment building, and continued on around the narrow drive that led behind the building where it was shaded by its proximity to a small wooded area.

Eli stepped out from the cover of the trees, and climbed in to sit in the seat behind mine. "How many vehicles do you guys have?"

"Four, if you count my old Vanquish that Jake drives now," Edward answered.

"Okay, I've seen the Ferrari, so that makes three. What's the fourth one?"

"A Bugatti Veyron. I've had it less than two weeks. It's sort of a replacement for the Vanquish that I gave to Jake, and I guess you could say this Sequoia replaces our old Volvo we gave Bella's dad. Bella pointed out that we should have at least one vehicle that would seat more than two people."

"I'm not familiar with the Bugatti Veyron, but it looks nice. Really, it's that fast?" He was apparently scanning Edward's thoughts but still speaking aloud for my benefit.

"It's the fastest currently available." Edward couldn't suppress his grin. "I'll have to let you try it out sometime."

"I get the feeling your cars aren't 'borrowed' like the ones I've used in the past - you own all of these cars legally?"

Edward and I both nodded our heads affirmatively. "But we've been known to 'borrow' cars before too, when necessary," I added, not wanting him to think we looked down on him for his admission. I thought of the Porsche Alice had commandeered for us in Italy, and the car we had used briefly in Phoenix when I was being rescued from James.

"I'm just curious how you pay for all of this since you don't have human victims as a source for cash or identities."

"I was fortunate to have received a sizable inheritance from my human parents who died right before I was changed, and I've invested it over the years," Edward explained. "Also, Carlisle has a steady income from his medical practice and teaching positions. But our real secret is Alice - since the time she joined the family, we have had an almost unlimited income, thanks to her skills in predicting the stock market. Alice and I can get you set up with a steady income, if you like."

"Sure. That sounds great. I do have some savings - with my nomadic lifestyle, I haven't have many living expenses, and money seemed to gradually accumulate. It always seemed wasteful to bury cash with the body so I kept adding it to my bank account. That's how I was able to pay for tuition. I was just thinking that with my new diet, my income source is gone, and I may find more uses for money since I'll be able to live among humans more easily. Maybe I'll even stay here long enough to finish out a degree this time."

"Money definitely makes it easier to blend in with humans," Edward commented. "Especially when you want to stay in one location for a few years."

No one said anything for a while and I wondered if Edward and Eli were having a mental conversation. I looked over at Edward but his face was devoid of expression and he was just looking at the road. I turned on the radio and discovered the previous owners, or perhaps the last person to test drive the vehicle, must have liked country music. I quickly scanned for another station and stopped at the first one playing a familiar song. I glanced at Edward and he smiled at me, approving of the song selection.

As I listened to the music, I wondered what we would be doing in chemistry lab. It was scheduled as a four-hour block. Surely whatever we needed to do couldn't take that long? I decided I might take advantage of the extra time to go hang out in the library if I finished early.

"Bella." Edward said sharply. I looked up and was met with "the look" again. I was confused briefly since I knew Jake was still at home, but Edward motioned toward Eli with his eyes, so I threw my shield around Eli. I wondered what he might have been thinking about that was disturbing enough or private enough that Edward wanted to be shielded from it.

"Sorry!" Eli exclaimed. "Of course you wouldn't want to see such images of your cousin." Cousin? Eli must have been thinking of Tanya? "I'll try to be more careful of my thoughts. I sometimes forget you can still hear me even when I'm not listening to you."

Edward started to pinch the bridge of his nose and then stopped himself, his hand returning to grip the steering wheel. "It's nothing I haven't seen before. You can think about whatever you want. Bella is shielding you now, anyway."

"What do you mean it's nothing you haven't seen before?" I demanded. "What exactly were you seeing?" I had a pretty good sense of what memories Eli would have obtained from the humans he had scanned, and the images he had gotten from Edward's mind would have only been of our confrontation with the Volturi. Wouldn't they? Edward never had explained to me, in detail, exactly what had happened with him and Tanya when Tanya had "expressed an interest" in him. He had assured me nothing happened, and I believed him, but he had not offered details and I had decided not to press him. Was there more to the story that I should know about? Was this another example of Edward keeping things from me to avoid upsetting or worrying me?

"It's nothing, Bella, really. He was remembering some things he had scanned from the minds of humans, and they were similar to some memories and fantasies I had seen in Tanya's mind. The males involved were different, and the perspective was different, but the activities were similar. Tanya's thoughts used to make me rather uncomfortable, and I blocked her as best as I could. That was one of the reasons our families never joined together." He reached for my hand, and I allowed him to take it in his, interlocking our fingers together. He gave my hand a gentle squeeze. "We can talk it about it later in more detail, if it's bothering you," he added, "but I assure you it's nothing to be concerned about."

"Okay," I agreed. We would definitely talk about it later in more detail.

Eli changed the subject slightly, asking about the rest of Tanya's family, and both Edward and I described the other family members for him. We had visited the Denalis several times over the years, and I had grown quite close to Kate, especially. Tanya had never been anything but friendly and polite, but I always felt a little odd around her, knowing she had once "expressed an interest" in my husband.

We soon arrived at the science building, where Edward dropped us off inside the parking garage before heading to his Genetics class. Eli and I took the elevator to the second floor, where our chemistry lab would be held. We went in and selected a lab station in the back of the room, having agreed earlier to be lab partners. We were the first ones to arrive; Edward had dropped us off early because he had to have time to get to his own class, in another building, which also started six o'clock. We got our lab workbooks out of our backpacks and turned to the lab listed on the syllabus.

Eventually the other students arrived, and Dr. Ross came in right at six o'clock. He explained we would be doing the first lab in the book, which involved measuring various items and determining the mass of various substances, with a focus on the distinction between accuracy and precision. He seemed somewhat apologetic, recognizing that it was a rather basic concept that many of us had probably mastered in high school, but since the concepts were fundamental to our success in future labs, and not everyone had the same level of experience from high school, he had decided to include it.

He then introduced our TA, Mr. Abney, who would be conducting the lab, and asked for questions. There were none, so he turned the class over to TA and left.

The TA, who asked that we call him Jason, then took attendance and ensured everyone had a lab partner. There were an odd number of people present, so he made one group of three. I was thankful he hadn't asked Eli and me to include the extra person with us - we didn't need a human slowing us down, and there were some things I was hoping to talk to Eli about which couldn't be discussed in front of humans.

I vaguely remembered doing the same lab in high school, but even if I had never done it before, nothing it involved was the least bit challenging for a vampire. Our measurements were quick and extremely accurate, and with our heightened senses we had the ability to be much more precise than a human. We finished after only one hour, even though we were trying to move at human speed. We decided it might look suspicious if we left this early and had all the answers right, so we went through some of the measurements a second time just to look busy.

An hour and forty-five minutes into the lab, we gave up pretending to be working and just sat there a while talking.

"Did you go hunting again?" I asked him. I had noticed during the lab that his eyes seemed lighter, and the traces of orange were fainter.

"Yes," he grinned. "I thought I would try hunting more often, since I can do it without the guilt now. I went back to that same forest by myself last night and found a black bear. You and Edward were right - the predators are definitely more satisfying."

"Bears are Emmett's favorite. He prefers grizzlies, though." Large, irritable grizzlies, to be exact.

"What's your favorite?"

"Mountain lion. It's Edward's favorite too. It's been a while since either of us has had one."

"I take it they're not very plentiful around here? As much time as I've spent outdoors, I've never paid much attention to animals."

"They're pretty rare in this part of the country. There was one sighted in this state a few years back, and it actually made the news. Supposedly the last time there was a confirmed sighting in New Hampshire was a hundred and forty years prior to that." I recalled the bit of trivia Edward had shared with me earlier when he was researching our hunting options on the internet. "They're more common in the western third of the country. We would find one occasionally when we lived in Washington."

"Jason's getting ready to come check on us. He's noticed we're talking and not working."

"Well, we shouldn't be in too much trouble, since we're done already."

Jason made his way to the back of the room and stopped at our station. "Do you two need any help?"

"No, we're finished, actually," I told him. "Did you want to check our answers?"

"Yes, you can tear out the pages for this lab and leave them on the desk for me, and I'll get them back to you next Tuesday. Are you sure you don't want to double-check your answers? When you hurry through the lab it's easier to make simple mistakes."

"We've both done this before," Eli lied. He had told me earlier it was his first chemistry lab ever. "I was a lab assistant last year for my high school's Chem I class - there weren't any classes I needed available sixth period so my chemistry teacher let me hang out in her room to help out. It counted as a study hall, but I got a lot of extra experience that way."

"Really?" Jason smiled. "I did the same thing when I was in high school. Well, if you're sure you're done, you're welcome to go ahead and leave. We're not doing anything else in here today. Remember to leave the workbook pages you completed on my desk."

"Okay, thanks." We tore out the pages, made sure our names were on them, and took them up to the desk in front, made use of the stapler that had been left there, and started a pile of completed labs on the TA's desk.

"Edward won't be back with the car for at least another hour, right?" Eli asked once we were out in the hallway.

"Right. His class started at six and is supposed to last three hours."

"I can just run home, since it's dark now. Or I could stay and keep you company if you prefer. What were you planning to do?"

"I thought I would just hang out in the library. You can come with me if you want. There's nothing in particular I need to look for there - I was just going to kill time until Edward gets out of class."

"Okay."

I sent Edward a text to let him know we'd be in the library.

"You pulled that story about being a lab assistant directly from his head, didn't you?" I asked, as we made our way across campus the library.

"You catch on quick," he grinned.

"Isn't that a little risky?" I'd never known Edward to do anything like that with a human. There had been a few other things Eli had said in our chemistry and history classes that I had suspected were in response to something someone had been thinking. He seemed to use his ability to entertain himself at times.

"Risky how?"

"Exposure. You're drawing attention to yourself when you do that. If anyone figures out you can read minds, they'll know you're not normal, and then they may pay closer attention to you and possibly figure out what you are."

He shrugged. "I've never had any problems. Humans don't associate mindreading with vampires. It's not part of the folklore. Don't worry, no one's ever figured me out."

He held the library door open for me, and we walked over to a corner of the room where there was a table behind some bookshelves and sat down.

"Oh, we wanted to invite you over to our place this weekend," I suddenly remembered. "Alice and Jasper will be over for a visit, and probably Esme. Do you think you could make it on Saturday?"

"Sure, I'd love to meet them. What about the others? They can't come?"

"Rose and Emmett have a Canadian hunting trip planned, and Carlisle has been heavily involved in his research project. He'll probably stay in Cambridge to work on that, like he did last weekend when Rose and Emmett came over."

"When were you all thinking of going on that extended hunting trip to look for large predators?"

"I'm not sure - we haven't discussed a definite time yet. Edward and I are going to need to hunt in a week or so, but my Dad and Sue are coming the next weekend, and Mom and Phil will be here the weekend after that. We'll probably go out for some moose again before Dad arrives, and maybe plan a longer hunting trip the fourth weekend of October."

"That's okay, I'm think I can probably find another black bear in the meantime. So you usually go about two weeks between hunts?"

"Yeah, two or three. We sometimes hunt a little extra right before my parents come - my dad smells slightly better than the average human. We want to reduce the risks as much as possible."

"You know, it's really amazing to me that you're still able to have a relationship with both of your parents. How did you manage that? I would think the Volturi would frown on such things."

"Well, I think Edward told you how Jake phased in front of Dad right after I was changed?"

"Yes, but the Volturi didn't care?"

"Apparently not. They never brought it up when they were trying to think of reasons to justify exterminating us. He didn't actually know our secret at that point though, just that there was something supernatural going on, and he was content to leave things that way until just this month. His current wife, Sue, is a member of the Quileute tribal council though, so he has the full story on the werewolves, and the Volturi exempted the Quileutes from the exposure rule since they have their own secret to protect as well."

"What about your mom? Edward didn't say much about her. Does she know what you really are?"

I smiled as I remembered the story we had come up with for Renée. "She thinks we're top secret government agents."

Eli looked at me like I was crazy, and waited for my explanation.

"In the beginning, I thought I might have to let her think I died, and we had considered faking my death, but I kept procrastinating, hoping to come up with some other solution. I knew her well enough to know that she would _not_ settle for 'need to know' like Charlie - I knew she would insist on a detailed explanation. And despite her many childlike qualities, Renée has a tendency to be a bit too insightful sometimes. Charlie had told her I had gone to Alaska to attend college, but it quickly became difficult to come up with excuses for why she couldn't visit us and why we couldn't visit her."

"So how did you come up with this secret agent idea?"

"Well, one day, roughly six months after my transformation, inspiration struck me as I walked past the TV where Emmett and Rosalie were watching a movie. The characters were talking about entering a witness protection program, and the government was allowing the witnesses to undergo plastic surgery to avoid recognition. I have no idea if the government ever does that in real life - of course movies aren't always very realistic. But as I thought about it, that idea developed into the secret agent idea. The next time Renée called, inviting us to come, I told her there was something serious I needed to talk to her about. Something I had wanted to share with her earlier, but I'd had to wait to receive all the proper approvals. I told her there was a reason the Cullens all had the same odd eye color even though none of them were blood-related, a reason why they all looked so perfect, why they had so much money, why Edward had stayed indoors all day when we were in Jacksonville, and why I had been making excuses about why we couldn't visit for the last six months. I told her the Cullens were all part of a top-secret government program, and that I had committed to join the program upon marrying Edward."

"And she believed this? How does being a government agent explain all those traits?"

"Yes, she believed it - she still does. And I'm getting to the part about how it explains things. I told her this program was so secret that participants were required to cut off all contact with anyone who had known them, with exceptions occasionally granted for parents and siblings. It was so secret that participants must undergo cosmetic surgery and skin treatments to alter their appearances, and eye surgery to enhance vision which had a side effect of changing the eye color. I told her it paid extremely well, and was dangerous only if the participants violated the rules by divulging government secrets or by being exposed as government agents. I told her the reason Edward had stayed indoors when we visited her in Jacksonville was because of the surgeries and skin treatments - as a result of those procedures we must take medications on an ongoing basis which could have harmful side effects if the skin was in direct sunlight. I supposedly underwent the surgical procedures immediately after our honeymoon, which explained the time I was 'sick' and 'recovering' - during my pregnancy with Renesmee, Edward and Carlisle weren't sure I was going to survive, and they told my parents I had contracted a rare disease in South America."

"So was she upset that you waited six months to tell her about it? Didn't she know that Charlie had been able to visit you all along?"

"Well, I explained to her that Charlie had known for a few months, but that due to government red tape, and a delay in her background check being completed, I had just gotten approval to share the information with her. I emphasized that she could tell no one the truth because anyone who exposes us could end up on a hit list."

"Yeah, a Volturi hit list."

"Exactly. I instructed her to tell anyone who asked that I was attending college in Alaska; she could tell Phil that I'd had some cosmetic surgeries, but no additional information. I attempted to put her mind at ease by reiterating that I was in no danger, assuming our cover didn't get blown - my job duties themselves were not dangerous, just secret. I also assured her that I had been fully aware of what I was getting into when I agreed to marry Edward, and that my participation had in no way been forced upon me, but had been my choice."

"And she really believes that?"

"Yes, she does. I know this story would not have worked with just anyone, but I know my mom. She eagerly accepted all of that as a logical explanation for all the odd things she had noticed that had been subconsciously bothering her. Her only question had been 'Are you happy?' I was able to assure her truthfully that I was absolutely the happiest I had ever been - that it was a great job and that I was loving married life."

"Well, if you consider the 'government program' to be vampirism, and the 'government' to be the Volturi, a lot of what you told her was sort of the truth. So how did things go the first time she visited?"

"I warned her before she came to be prepared that I looked 'different' - more like rest of the Cullens. She came by herself the first time - Phil wasn't able to make it. I did detect a sense of loss in her eyes when she first saw me; the Bella she knew was gone. But after we talked, she accepted that it was really still me, and that I was truly happy. And that was really all that mattered to her."

"How did you explain your daughter and how quickly she aged?"

"She still doesn't know that we have a daughter - Renesmee would go to stay with Jacob & Billy whenever Renée was visiting. Obviously, there was no acceptable way to explain her uniqueness - nothing about a government program could explain her rapid aging. When she was 7 years old, her rate of growth had slowed enough that we introduced her to Renée as Edward's sister, who had recently joined the government program after locating Edward. She always wears contacts when Renée visits, to make her eyes look amber like ours. We had laid the groundwork early on, with Edward mentioning he had a younger sister he had lost contact with shortly after the death of their parents, when they were each adopted by separate families."

"So Renesmee knows her grandmother, but her grandmother doesn't know she's her granddaughter?"

"Right. Renesmee was really excited to finally meet her. Renée loves her, too, but she can never know the truth."

"Well, at least they are able to know each other. That's really great that you've managed to stay in contact with your family."

I nodded in agreement, and we sat there for a few seconds as I wondered what we could talk about next.

"So tell me more about your family members I'll be meeting this weekend. I know from what Edward told me that Alice can see the future, Jasper can sense and influence emotions, and he sees Esme as a mother figure, but I don't know much else about them except their roles in your confrontations with the Volturi."

"Well, Esme is very motherly - she's like a mother to me too. I don't think she would mind me telling you this - she had a baby boy when she was human, and he died. She couldn't bear the loss and jumped off a cliff. Carlisle found her near death, and you can guess the rest of the story. She had always wanted to be a mother, and Carlisle had been like a father to Edward, so it makes sense she ended up assuming the role of mother in the family. She was twenty-six when she was changed, so she's the oldest of us."

"And Jasper?"

"He and Alice joined the family in 1950. They're the only ones Carlisle didn't change. Jasper was changed by a woman named Maria during the Civil War, and was forced to fight in the Vampire Wars of the South for about twenty or so years. He will seem a bit intimidating when you first meet him, because of all of his scars, but he's really very nice. He's quiet at times, and he's incredibly smart."

"So how did he meet Alice? They were already together when they joined the Cullens?"

"Yes, they were already together. Alice had visions of Jasper and of the Cullens that guided her when she awoke to this life. She found Jasper in a diner a couple years before they found the Cullens. She has no memories at all of her human life, or of the change itself."

"Wait - she has no memories at all?" Eli seemed very perplexed. "I've never met anyone who had no memories at all of their human life. They fade, definitely, but all of us have them. I wonder if I would be able to read them if she allowed me to do a memory scan."

"I'm sure she would love for you to try. I know she was disappointed when Aro didn't find any of her human memories. He wasn't looking for those memories specifically, of course, but when he touches someone he takes in all of their thoughts and memories, and Edward said he didn't see anything from her human life at all."

"I'm eager for the challenge," he grinned. "I've never met anyone whose brain I couldn't read like a book."

"So what's it like when you scan for memories?" I inquired. "Can you look for certain memories, or do you have to start at the beginning and read through everything to find what you want?"

"I can see how memories are grouped. It's kind of like having an index, but different people store things in their minds in different ways, so each index is unique, and not in alphabetical order. Some group things by when they happened, some by where, some by who they were with, and often it's a combination. Sometimes there are cross-references, sometimes not. Some people have their own weird little system, and I have to peek at a sampling of memories to figure out what it is. So I can usually look for specific types of memories, or narrow down my search based on when and where the memory occurred, but I can't just go straight to a particular memory unless I've scanned it before."

"So have you seen how Edward's memories grouped? Or do you not see the index unless you're scanning memories?"

"I've seen his index, but I haven't pulled up any memories from it. I wouldn't do that unless he asked me to, or gave permission. He would know if I had scanned his memories."

"Oh, no, I wasn't accusing you of that. I was just wondering how he groups things."

"He has two main groupings, pre-Bella, and post-Bella. I suspect the day he met you is probably the dividing point, but as I said, I haven't scanned the memories. Within those main divisions, it seems to be grouped by year, and within each year, they are ordered by how pleasant they were."

"I should have guessed that," I laughed.

"Why?"

"That's how his CD collection is organized. By year of release, then by order of preference within each year."

"Ah. Well, it makes sense that he would organize his music collection like that. He would be able to find what he wants the quickest that way, since it would match the way it's stored in his mind."

"So when you were reading each other's minds, did you see and hear only what he was trying to tell you? Or were you getting other stray thoughts as well? I imagine it must have been pretty hard to concentrate with all the human minds in the room."

"I figured out how to screen out the human minds fairly quickly. They became a dull roar of background noise when I really focused on Edward's conscious thought. I did get the other subconscious thoughts too. Not intentionally, but just because they were there. He knows what I heard, though, because he could hear me reading it from him."

"So what else did you hear? Anything I might not already know about?" A small part of me still wondered if he might still be hiding things from me. I didn't really think he was, because he seemed so sincere in his promise after his apology last Thursday. So I was fairly confident that he wasn't hiding anything from me intentionally, but there could still be things he hadn't bothered to tell me that I might find interesting.

"Certainly nothing you would need to be concerned about."

"Can you give me some examples? I'm just curious what types of things you hear in the background."

Eli hesitated. "I'm not really comfortable giving examples - he didn't give me permission to share his subconscious thoughts with anyone. He didn't share those things with me intentionally, and I don't think it would be right for me to repeat them. I trust that he is affording me the same courtesy."

"Is he hiding something?" I was starting to get worried now. Surely Eli wouldn't mind telling me a few things if there was nothing to hide.

"No. There are no big secrets or anything. I don't mean to make a big deal out of it, but my conscience won't let me share things that weren't shared with me intentionally, when the person I'm talking about isn't even here. I may play around with the humans sometimes, like our TA tonight, but even then I wouldn't reveal anything that they wouldn't speak aloud to other people, and I don't say enough for anyone to realize I'm sharing someone's actual thoughts. I believe Edward is the same way, isn't he, about respecting people's privacy?"

I thought about that. There were several things he had not told me about because he felt it was not his place to share. Things like what happened to Rosalie right before she was changed, how Esme had intentionally thrown herself off a cliff rather than just falling, and how Jasper had participated in the southern wars. "Yes, you're right, he's the same way. But this is a little different because he's my husband, and we don't have secrets from each other."

"That may be so," he smiled. "You ask him to give me specific permission to share everything that crosses his mind and see what he says. I'll be glad to share if he says it's all right."

"Okay." That shouldn't be a problem. I share my mind with him sometimes - he wouldn't mind if Eli shared with me the stray thoughts of their mental conversations.

I felt my mobile phone vibrating and saw I had a text from Edward. His class was over and he was waiting for us in the car outside the library.

"Edward's here," I told him. We gathered our things and headed out to the car.


	17. Openness

Chapter 17: Openness

I was sitting in our family room snuggled up with Edward on the love seat, as we had been for the last two and a half hours. I had been all but oblivious to the incessant action scenes that had been playing out on our huge flat screen TV. The movie Jacob had chosen for us to watch tonight was the type where the makers of the movie had apparently counted on the constant action scenes distracting the viewer from the fact that there was no plot. Unfortunately, the ploy hadn't worked on me. My focus had, instead, been on the sensation of Edward's hand slowly rubbing my arm.

Jacob had managed to stay awake for the entire movie, but started snoring the second the closing credits appeared. Renesmee had been asleep for at least the last hour. She had started out leaning over on Jacob's shoulder, but during a particularly loud part of the movie she had suddenly twisted and flipped over toward the other end of the sofa, landing with her head leaned up at an odd angle against the arm of the sofa. After that, Jake had slid down onto the floor where he could stretch out his legs, leaving his head and shoulders resting against the front of the sofa so he could still see the TV.

Neither of them was in a good position for sleeping - if we left them like that, Jake would definitely have a sore neck in the morning, and while Nessie wouldn't have that problem, she just _looked_ uncomfortable and I wasn't going to leave her that way.

I scooped her up and effortlessly carried her upstairs to their bedroom and placed her on the bed. She remained soundly asleep. Their room was surprisingly clean, aside from Jake's clothes from the previous day which were still in the floor. The mismatched furniture in their room was in stark contrast to the rest of the house where everything had been carefully coordinated, but it didn't bother me as it did Alice.

I went back downstairs and noticed Edward's eyes fixed on Jake. The TV had been turned off and the DVD had been returned to its spot on the shelf.

"He wouldn't like you staring at him, you know," I reminded him.

"I know," he admitted. "It just amazes me how quickly and effortlessly he can fall asleep. He can't be comfortable like that - look at his neck."

"Should I carry him up too?" I wondered aloud.

"Jake!" Edward nudged Jake's arm with his foot.

"Ughhhh... Lemme sleep..." Jake mumbled.

"Nessie's upstairs in bed," I told him. "Are you going to sleep down here in the floor by yourself?"

"Mmmmmm... Go away..."

"Would you like _me_ to carry you upstairs?" Edward threatened.

"Ugh, no, I'm getting up. Don't touch me."

Jake still didn't move, and after about five seconds let out another snore.

Edward nudged him with his foot again, a little harder this time, and I stepped closer and bent down to shake his shoulders.

"Okay, okay. I'm moving." Jake somehow made it to his feet and dragged himself up the stairs. I sat back down with Edward, who put his arm back around my shoulders and started rubbing my arm again. I heard Jake's bedroom door close, and the sound of their mattress as he apparently let himself fall onto the bed. The snores resumed.

Alone at last.

"That was an awful movie," Edward commented. "I'm not sure when I've seen a poorer excuse for entertainment."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I think I lost interest before we even turned it on."

"You didn't have to watch it. You could have done something else."

"No, I enjoyed sitting here with you," I insisted. "It didn't matter if the TV was on or not."

"Same here." He kissed the top of my head.

I snuggled a bit closer to him, and neither of us spoke for a minute or so. It felt so good, so comfortable, just sitting here with him. The circles he was rubbing on my arm were comforting, even though they seemed as if they were being done absentmindedly, as if his mind was really elsewhere.

During the movie my mind kept going back to the little things that had been said in the last few days that had been bothering me. It still disturbed me that he could have kept something from me - something as serious as the threat a new vampire in the area could have posed. Of course, everything had turned out fine. Maybe I should trust him more in what he decides to tell me or not tell me? No, he should be able to share those things with me so we could deal with them together. I could almost understand him hiding that sort of thing from me when I was human, like when Victoria was after me, but I was a vampire now too and could protect him even better than he could protect me. I knew he only wanted to spare me the worry, and had my best interest at heart, and that is what made it easy for me to forgive him. I trusted him completely to always do what he felt was best for me - the problem was when he would make decisions affecting both of us without even discussing things with me. I wanted him to trust me enough to share everything with me, even things that might upset me or cause me to worry.

Eli's reaction earlier tonight when I had asked him to share Edward's thoughts had caught me off guard. Was there something in particular he thought Edward wouldn't let him share? Or were the things he refused to share just mundane thoughts and Eli was really just that committed to protecting people's privacy? I suspected the latter was probably the case, since Edward had told me that all of Eli's thoughts seemed sincere and he had not detected any deception in anything he had told us. He had been very open with us about himself and I had no real reason to distrust him. He could easily have given me some harmless "stray thoughts" even if there were other things he didn't think Edward would want him to tell me. I knew the only reason it even bothered me was because of last Thursday when I found out Edward had been hiding something from me. I felt bad that I was having these sort of doubts. I knew Edward loved me and would do anything for me. Still, I found myself looking forward to talking to Eli again, after Edward gives permission to share his thoughts, so I could be reassured that I was worrying about nothing.

Part of the reason I felt bad was because I had already told Edward I had forgiven him, yet my mind kept going back to his transgression. Had I truly forgiven him? Yes, I decided, I really had forgiven him for that specific mistake, but the repercussions were still there - concern about whether he would make a similar bad decision the next time he wanted to protect me from something.

Also, I was still wondering about the Tanya conversation. Edward admitted earlier tonight that there were more details he hadn't shared - something I had always known but had been reminded of tonight. Details he apparently felt should be discussed with just the two of us, without Eli around. He had assured me it was nothing to be concerned about, but the curiosity was killing me now. However, I didn't really want to spoil our current relaxed mood by bringing it up. He was still rubbing my arm, and I wondered what he was thinking about.

"Do you still want me to give you the detailed version of what happened with Tanya?" he asked. Apparently we were thinking about the same thing after all. I was surprised he bought it up himself though - I had been certain he would wait for me to ask.

I sat up and pulled back a bit so I could see his face. "Yes, I'd like to hear it. It's not that I don't trust you, Edward. You told me nothing happened and I've never doubted that, but I would still feel better if you were comfortable telling me the whole story."

"The reason I've never told you the details is not so much because I had a problem with you knowing about them, but more because I don't enjoy reliving the experience. It was very awkward - she made me very uncomfortable. Eli's thoughts today reminded me of it and that's why I asked you to shield him. When we were driving him back to his apartment tonight, he was worried that he had gotten me in trouble with you - he thought I was making a big deal about nothing, with the Tanya situation, and he told me you were probably imagining things far worse than what actually happened and that I should just tell you the whole story. He's right, of course, and I had already decided on our way to class that I needed to do just that. I don't want you to feel like I'm keeping secrets from you about Tanya, because I'm not. At least, that was never my intention."

"Okay - you have my attention." I was a bit nervous to finally be hearing these details, but mostly I just felt eager to know the whole truth.

"I suppose I should start at the beginning. When our families first met, she found me attractive. Her thoughts were similar to the ones I was accustomed to hearing in the minds of human females. Typical. She did not voice her thoughts aloud, so I ignored them as best as I could. Over the years, her attraction seemed to grow. She would occasionally flirt, though that's something that comes rather naturally to her, and I was the only unattached male in our group, so no one seemed to attribute much significance to her flirtatious behavior. Then when Emmett told her I was a virgin, she began to see me as a challenge." He rolled his eyes. "She thought she would be doing me a favor to introduce me to the pleasures she could offer, and it bothered her that I didn't seem to be interested in her charms - she started to worry that she was losing her touch. She had never met a man she couldn't seduce - most had required very little effort on her part. She had fantasies of the two of us together, imagining the things she wanted to do to me, and things that she wanted me to do to her. She had never seen me nude, of course, so the mental images were of my face with her idea of a perfect male body." He chuckled lightly. "I -"

"So it looked just like you, then?" I interrupted, a bit alarmed. No male body could be more perfect than his.

"No," he laughed. "Her idea of perfection and yours are rather different. Anyway, I would be hit with the mental images of those fantasies at least once each time our families visited one another, but she never spoke anything aloud, never confronted me about her desires, so I never acknowledged I was seeing the images. At first they were just her own fantasies, which she tried to suppress because she knew I could hear her thoughts, but not long after Emmett's comment she started sending them to me deliberately. That's when she started making me really uncomfortable. This went on for years, whenever our families were visiting one another."

"So why did you keep hanging around with her, if she was making you uncomfortable? Why did you keep visiting the Denalis with the rest of your family?"

"Well, most of the time during the visits, she was just friendly and behaved appropriately despite her attraction to me, and most of her thoughts were easy to ignore. It wasn't like she was bombarding me with her fantasies all the time. At first they slipped into her mind unintentionally, but even when she began embracing them and showing them to me on purpose, she would be hurt and a bit embarrassed when I didn't take the bait, and she would return to her normal, more pleasant, self for the rest of the visit."

"But this stopped at some point? What happened to change things?"

"One day about seven months before I met you, our family was in Denali visiting, and I had gone off into the woods to hunt and to get away from her fantasies. I had drained a moose and was just sitting there on a fallen tree dreading going back to the house when her thoughts started intruding on my mind again and I realized she was coming to find me and intended to seduce me - she wasn't expecting me to be able to resist if she turned on all her charms instead of just dropping hints. I could have outrun her, of course, but it seemed silly to let her literally chase me through the forest, and I knew I would have to go back to the house eventually anyway, so I decided to stay and face her and tell her straight out that I wasn't interested."

"So she tried to seduce you in the forest?" He decided to _let_ her try to seduce him?

"Yes, 'tried' being the key word - she definitely didn't succeed. She sat down next to me, told me she had been in love with me for years, and that she would like for us to be mates. She was playing the same familiar fantasies of us in her mind. I told her what she was feeling was not love for me, but love of the challenge of seducing me. I told her, politely, that I would not be another notch on her bedpost. She tried to persuade me that I was wrong, that she really cared for me, but of course I could hear her true thoughts so I knew how shallow her feelings were. She made a sudden decision to kiss me, thinking it would change my mind. I caught her wrists as she tried to put her arms around my neck and I leaned back to avoid the kiss. She leaned forward, still determined, and threw us both off balance and we fell onto the forest floor. So we ended up on the ground together...wrestling." He grimaced. "I could see her next moves as she thought of them, so she never managed to pin me down or kiss me. But I didn't really want to hurt her and was trying not to rip off her arms, so I suppose I wasn't being forceful enough for her to get the message that I truly wanted her to stop trying. I was feeling very ungentlemanly fighting a lady. Then I became aware that she was getting aroused from the wrestling and she thought I was enjoying it as well."

"You weren't?" I could visualize Tanya turning on all her charms of seduction. How could any man not be aroused by the physical touch of such an exquisitely beautiful female vampire, a "professional" seductress?

"Of course not - you are the _only_ one who has ever had that effect on me. The realization of what she was thinking startled me, and I threw her about ten yards away. I told her I had no desire to hurt her, either physically or emotionally, but I was simply not interested in that sort of relationship with her. I ran back to the house and told Carlisle I was ready to leave. He could tell from the look on my face that I was serious, and didn't ask any questions. Tanya came back into the house and didn't speak to me aloud but was silently apologizing and was very embarrassed by her actions, even more embarrassed by her failure, and a bit hurt by my rejection. We all left immediately, as soon as we could pack, cutting our visit short by several days. Alice had seen what happened in the forest, too late to warn me, but she told the others, so they all know. Emmett, in particular, enjoyed giving me a hard time over it. But this is the first time I've recounted the tale myself. Does that answer all of your questions?"

"Didn't you go to Denali after that first day in Biology class? Wasn't that awkward? How did she act then?"

"Yes, I wasn't thinking clearly that day when I decided to go there. I just had to get away from Forks before I decided to track you down. When I got there, she thought at first that I had changed my mind, but she didn't bring it up immediately. I wasn't very sociable during my time there. I spent most of the time sitting in their family room just staring off into space. No matter what I did, I kept seeing your face. The last day I was there, I went outside to be alone and Tanya came out to talk to me. I didn't tell her why I had left Forks - I wasn't in any mood to talk - but she was actually the one who convinced me that I was strong enough go back, that I should face my problems head on. When she realized I had decided to leave Denali, she quickly ran off, embarrassed for me to see how deeply she was hurt. My rejection bothered her more than I had previously realized. I suppose, compared to the thousands of men she had actually been with, her feelings for me were relatively strong. They weren't that deep, but compared to what she had experienced, she thought they were."

"So she didn't try to kiss you again?"

"Not like the time before - she didn't tackle me again. I - "

"She _did_? She hadn't given up?" I was starting to wonder if she had even given up when Edward married me. Did she still lust after my husband?

"For most of the conversation, she had just been friendly, the way she had been before she had decided to pursue me. Near the end of the conversation, I had given her a peck on the cheek to thank her for helping me with my decision to go back to Forks, and she tried to turn her head to change it into a kiss on the mouth, but of course I saw it coming and was too quick for her. She knew it wouldn't happen but somehow she couldn't pass up the opportunity." He rolled his eyes. "I felt bad hurting her feelings, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. She really has been a good friend, just like Irina and Kate. Her thoughts weren't inappropriate _all_ the time. Most of the time, through the years, I actually enjoyed the visits with the Denalis until the point in each visit where her thoughts about me would turn vulgar. But she never intended to offend me, and I always forgave her. I didn't see her again after my trip alone to Denali, until she came to our wedding. Once she met you, she realized I had been waiting for you. She saw you as my soul mate - she thought we had been destined for one another - and that explained, in her mind, why I was able to resist her, and she didn't take my rejection so personally any more. Do you have any more questions?"

"Does she still have lustful thoughts about you? Has she had any inappropriate thoughts during the times we've visited her together?"

"She still finds me attractive, but considers me strictly off-limits." He paused. "It's much the same way she finds Carlisle, Jasper, Emmett, and Jacob attractive, but would never let herself entertain such fantasies. She would be very embarrassed if she knew I had shared those thoughts with anyone, and normally I wouldn't, but I think that will help you see her current thoughts of me in the proper perspective, and you deserve a complete answer to your question. Also, besides that, she truly likes you, Bella, and she has no desire to come between us. She considers you a friend."

"She finds _Jacob_ attractive? Even though he's a werewolf?" It was hard to believe any vampire could be physically attracted to a werewolf.

"She finds his physical appearance in human form pleasing, but of course she's repulsed by the smell. She would never take action based on that attraction, obviously, for numerous reasons. Jacob, as well as all of us Cullen men, are all labeled as strictly unavailable in her mind. It's kind of like the way a lot of women might think a particular movie star is attractive, but in reality would never have an affair with him, especially if he were married, even if the opportunity presented itself."

I nodded. That did make sense. However, I found my mind going back to the seduction in the forest. "I still don't really understand why you rejected her in the first place. She was beautiful, you were both vampires, you were both single, you knew she cared about you, you enjoyed her company, and you hadn't met me yet. Why wouldn't you have wanted to explore the possibility of a relationship? Was it because she had already been with so many others? You weren't embarrassed by your own inexperience, were you?"

He laughed. "No, I don't think my inexperience would have been a problem...her thoughts would have told me exactly what she wanted me to do...they already had, actually. I just didn't want to do that with her. I wasn't in love with her; I only liked her as a friend, as a cousin. The fact that she had been with so many others didn't work in her favor either - I had no desire to be one among thousands who had shared her bed. Also, I knew that if she had succeeded in seducing me, she would have lost interest quickly and moved on to her next conquest. And you know my 'old-fashioned morals' - she would have had to marry me first. It's how I was raised. I wasn't worried about her soul, since she was already a vampire, but still, I wouldn't have disappointed my mother in that way."

"Your mother probably wouldn't have been too pleased about you marrying a succubus, would she?"

"Probably not." He grinned at the idea, and then his expression shifted and he looked at me intently. "She would definitely have approved of you, though." He ran his thumb along my jaw and chin. "I so wish she could have met you."

"Were you thinking of your mother that time I tried to seduce you before we were married?" I had come to regret that attempted seduction, except for the fact that it resulted in our engagement, with his promise to change me himself. Aside from that, I felt guilty that I had tried to make him go against his morals and rob him of his virtue. I wondered sometimes how my unladylike behavior could not have caused him to think less of me.

"She crossed my mind, yes, but it wasn't the main reason I stopped. We already talked about that - I was honest with you before."

"I'm really glad we waited. It took me a while to understand your morals but I respect you for them." I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him gently on the mouth. He returned the kiss, my hands moving to the back of his neck, and we continued kissing for several minutes. "Thank you for explaining about Tanya," I told him when the kiss ended. "I do understand better now."

"No more questions?"

"Not about Tanya, but I did want to talk to you about something else. Did you hear any of my conversation with Eli in the library this evening?"

"No, I was blocking everything out - I had my mind on something else. There's something I wanted to ask you about too, but you can go first."

"No, you can go first - you've made me curious now. What did you want to ask me?"

"Well, in Genetics tonight, my professor was worrying about his Friday night Biology I lab. His TA left the university suddenly for personal reasons, and he needs to find a new TA by Friday, or he'll need to teach it himself, and he already has other obligations with his family on Friday nights. Friday nights are about the only time he gets to spend with his kids. There are several other med students who were vying for TA positions, but none of them were willing to take on a Friday night lab - that's prime party time and people don't want their weekends cut short. I felt bad for the professor and told him I'd heard a rumor about a TA position opening and told him I might be able to do it, but that I needed to check with you first."

"Why would you need to check with me?"

"Well, Friday nights are usually family time for us too. I wouldn't be around on Friday nights, for the rest of the quarter, and we would need to drive in separate vehicles on Fridays, since the lab starts at six o'clock and lasts four hours - there's no point in you waiting around on campus for me that long."

"That's fine - I don't mind driving separately. I'll miss you, of course, but I think it was really sweet of you to volunteer. I'm sure you'll do great job. Have you ever taught before?"

"No, but it can't be that hard. It's just a lab, and it's a basic biology class. So what did you want to ask me?"

"Oh - I was talking to Eli in the library after lab today. After he told me he'd like to try looking for Alice's missing memories, I was asking him questions about how his ability worked and what it was like scanning your thoughts. He said he was able to block out the human thoughts pretty easily, and could hear your subconscious thoughts along with your conscious thoughts that he was focusing on. I asked him for some examples but he wouldn't give me any. He seems to be just like you when it comes to sharing thoughts he's heard from other people - he's very sensitive about respecting people's privacy."

Edward smiled. "I knew he was a man of integrity. But why would you need to ask him about my thoughts? There's nothing I'm hiding from you, Bella. You can ask me anything and I will answer you honestly. Surely you know that."

"I do know that. It's not that I don't trust you to be honest with me. I was just thinking he might tell me something you just didn't think to share, that I wouldn't think to ask you about. I was just curious what types of stray thoughts you have. I'm interested in _everything_ about you. You've heard my mind before, but I've never heard yours. Eli has, and I would enjoy hearing what he heard, but he won't tell me anything unless you specifically give him permission. Would you tell him it's okay?"

He hesitated, seeming unsure how to respond.

It really hadn't occurred to me until this second that he might not want to give Eli permission to share with me; I had assumed it would be no problem. If it didn't bother him for Eli to know his thoughts, why would it bother him for Eli to talk about their "conversations" with me? Suddenly I realized that _that_ was what was really bothering me about his reaction. "I guess the real reason I'm asking is that I don't like the idea of someone who is practically a stranger knowing more of your thoughts than I do. In some ways, Eli is going to be able to know you better than I do."

I noticed the set of his jaw and the look of discomfort in his eyes, and it began to truly sink in that he really didn't want to give his permission for Eli to share, and was not likely to budge. I felt a wave of anger course through me. "It just doesn't feel fair - I move my shield aside and let you into my mind. I know you can't truly do the same for me since I can't read minds, but I didn't think you would have a problem with letting Eli share whatever he had heard. And why would you be so willing to share everything with Eli - someone you just met - but not with me?" That last part rather hurt. "And I hate to bring this up, because I did forgive you Thursday night - I really did - but are there more things you're hiding because you don't want me to worry about them?"

"I deserved that." He looked pained. "But I'm not hiding anything else. I didn't realize at the time that it was a big deal to keep that from you, but I do see now how wrong I was." He hesitated, and seemed to be trying to think of a way to phrase his thoughts in a way I would understand - in a way that would not upset me further. "As for why I'm uncomfortable letting Eli share every random thought he may have picked up on... Well, I'm accustomed to my mind being private, just like you are. I've been the only mind-reader around - I can hear everyone, but no one can hear me. And you know the guilt I feel about that. I _know_ I don't deserve for my thoughts to be private when I give privacy to no one. Well, no one but you, of course. The idea of losing that privacy is just...uncomfortable. There's never been the possibility before, since no one could hear my mind." His eyes darkened and he looked down. "Except Aro, of course, but even he wasn't reading my thoughts in order to share them, he just wanted them for himself."

I could feel my anger relenting a little, as I thought about how he was accustomed to complete mental privacy, like me, and that the idea of giving that up would be uncomfortable, but he hadn't fully answered my question, so I just waited for him to continue.

He looked up at me again. "And Eli - I think the reason I initially felt so comfortable sharing my thoughts with him - once I had assured myself he wasn't a Volturi spy - was exactly _because_ we didn't know each other. It didn't really matter to me what he thought of me. But what _you_ think of me is very important. You are everything to me. I wouldn't want some stray subconscious thought, that I'd thought nothing more of, to be repeated back to you, perhaps with the wrong connotation, and cause you to misunderstand or worry needlessly."

I _could_ understand that. I understood my own need for privacy; I could understand that he felt that need as well, and I could see the potential for misunderstandings. But I wasn't ready to give up. "I have a deal for you."

"I'm not sure I should make any deals with you." He gave me my favorite crooked smile.

"Come on now, our previous deals have worked out pretty well." I returned his smile, then grew more serious. "You give Eli permission to tell me what he sees in your mind. And any time he has talked to me about you, once we're alone I will move my shield and play the conversation back for you in my mind, so you can hear what he told me along with my reactions, and you can clarify any misunderstanding."

His eyes lit up and his eyebrows raised. "You would really do that for me?"

He looked so excited I suddenly felt guilty. I should let him into my head more often. I knew how much pleasure it gave him, yet I still had difficulty letting him hear my thoughts. It was technically not so difficult to move the shield aside any more, as I'd had years of practice, but I still struggled with allowing anyone - even Edward - to know all of my innermost thoughts and feelings, with no editing.

Even after ten wonderful years as his wife.

Even though I trusted him so completely.

It wasn't that I _never_ let him in, but I generally saved it for our most intimate moments, when my mind was so fully focused on my love for him that I knew nothing else less pleasant would intrude. My sharing had been deliberate, controlled, and very limited; I was asking him for so much more openness than I had been willing to give. The guilt swelled and became overwhelming. I was so selfish.

I shoved my shield aside.

_Yes, I will do that for you. _I reached up to caress the side of his face and looked him squarely in the eye. He was looking back at me with such tenderness. I felt so guilty. I didn't deserve the way he looked at me. _I need to let you in more often. _I looked down, ashamed. _I am so sorry - I am so selfish._ My eyes pricked; I would have been crying if I were still human. I knew he must be hearing the conflicting thoughts and emotions beneath the conscious thought I was directing toward him - the guilt, the selfishness, the regret for denying him this for so long, my love for him, the persistent reluctance to share my entire mind with him. How could he love someone so selfish? I left my defenses down and let him see the bad along with the good. He deserved to know how hypocritical I was being, asking him to expose his subconscious thoughts to me through our new friend, when I had the ability to do the same for him at any time, with no go-between, and had been withholding it from him except when I could limit what I was sharing.

His perfect arms embraced me as he took in my conscious and unconscious thoughts, and I rested my head on his shoulder. I was so undeserving of his love. He should be shoving me away right now, rather than pulling me closer.

"Of course I love you. And you are _not_ selfish. You are by far the most unselfish person I have ever known. It is completely understandable that you like that I can't hear all of your thoughts, that you would want to control what you share. And as much as I want to know _all_ of your thoughts, I am truly glad I can't take them from you like I do with everyone else. No one likes their mind to be violated in that way. I can hear how people feel when they find out I've been reading their minds. And how my family members feel when they realize they've let a personal or embarrassing thought slip in my presence. It is why I feel so guilty about my gift. It's one of the many reasons I wish I could turn it off at will."

He took a deep breath and paused, as if deciding whether to continue with what he was about to say. Then he sat back, took my hands in his, looked me squarely in the eye, and began speaking more slowly. "I know what it was like with Aro, with him taking all of my memories, including all of my most intimate moments with you, and making them his." His voice trembled with anger, with pain. "He raped my mind, Bella."

"Edward..." I pulled him to me so that his head was now resting on my shoulder, our positions reversed from a moment before. I didn't know what to say, so I just held him close and ran my fingers through his hair in an attempt to comfort him. I hadn't liked Aro seeing our memories either, but somehow I hadn't fully realized before now how completely violated Edward had felt during his encounters with him. I was touched by Edward's unusual degree of openness about anything unpleasant, and I shared his pain, wishing I could take it away. I hated Aro for hurting him like this. He had bravely offered himself to protect me, to protect Renesmee, to protect the rest of our family. And I knew he would do it again if the need ever arose. He had never spoken of his feelings about it before. But I should have known. Of course he felt violated. I would have felt the same way if Aro's gift had worked on me.

"The first time, I didn't realize the extent of his abilities until I was already in his presence, but I wasn't planning to exist much longer so I told myself it didn't matter. As I was raising my hand to his that first time, I briefly wondered if it might take away some of my guilt. I was fully aware that I deserved a large dose of my own medicine - it was long overdue. But it only had the opposite effect, because I now know first-hand how I make others feel. He took even more the second time - all of our intimate moments together, every detail of our lovemaking, all of my thoughts while you were going through your transformation, all my feelings of guilt over trying to convince you to end your pregnancy, all of the jealous thoughts I ever had toward Jacob before we were married, all of my guilty thoughts about having ever tried to leave you - he took everything."

_I'm so sorry, Edward. I should have realized how violated that made you feel..._

He raised his head to look me in the eye and spoke with conviction. "I don't ever want to do to you what he did to me. I don't ever want to make you feel that way. I want to hear _only_ what you choose to share."

I pulled him closer to me and wrapped my arms around him more tightly. My nonbeating heart had swelled with my love for him, and with the depth the love that I could hear in his voice. Was it possible that I could love him even more than I already did?

I felt even more guilty.

_You are right. I shouldn't have been asking Eli to help me invade your privacy. I'm so sorry... _I was such a horrible wife. He had been so patient and understanding all these years about how little I shared my mind with him.

"No, _you_ were right. Please stop feeling guilty - I am the one who should be apologizing. I should be willing to share everything with you. You are my wife; I love you and I trust you completely. I should not feel uncomfortable sharing things with you, especially things that have already been shared with Aro or Eli. I want to be completely open with you. I am going to give Eli my permission. I will tell him he can share with you anything he has heard or seen in my mind. And you don't have to play the conversations back for me. Just _please_ ask me about anything you have questions about, and let me know if you hear anything that upsets you or causes you to worry, and we will talk through it."

_No, you don't have to do that... Don't you feel violated by Eli when he scans your mind? You seemed so willing to share with him that first day in the cafeteria and that night when we went hunting, and you had never even met him before. And when you first met, he did start scanning before you gave permission... I was so thoughtless - I should have at least called to warn you about him." _Fortunately Edward had heard us coming, but I should have thought of giving him a simple phone call.

"No, sharing thoughts with Eli was much different than with Aro. Aro forced me, with no regard for my will, and he took everything, absolutely everything. I had been listening to Eli's thoughts for over an hour before he even tried to scan me. He has a very kind and conscientious mind, much like Seth or Angela. And like he explained, it is instinctual for him to use his gift, especially in unfamiliar situations like when he was meeting us for the first time. He was not hostile or aggressive like Aro. He didn't sift through my memories, even though he could have if he wanted to. He focused on my conscious thought; he had to in order to not be overwhelmed by the other voices I hear. I think he caught most of the semi-conscious thoughts that went along with what I was telling him - my feelings or reactions to what I was saying or to what he was saying. He was getting most of the background thoughts along with the deliberate words and images in my mind. But I have become quite skilled at controlling my conscious thoughts. I have to be in order to ignore or try to block what I don't want to overhear. So for the most part, I was able to control what I was telling Eli. Our exchanges have been fairly even - I was 'talking' the most during our mental conversations in the cafeteria, but I could still hear him even when he wasn't scanning me."

_Does that bother him, that you can still hear him when he isn't listening to you? It doesn't seem to. _He seemed like one of the most carefree people I'd ever met.

"The idea did make him a bit uncomfortable, as it would anyone, but somehow he really didn't seem to mind too much. He's a lot like Emmett in that way - there's not much he's thinking that he wouldn't say out loud. I think 'carefree' is an accurate assessment. He does as he pleases, following his conscience, and doesn't let much bother him. He doesn't dwell on things and beat himself up over past mistakes like I tend to do."

_You really don't have to tell him to share your thoughts with me. I want to respect your mental privacy like you have always respected mine. But if he does share anything with me I will share it with you. I'm going to try to let my shield down with you more often. _

"It will always be your choice," he promised me. "I don't expect it of you - I don't want you to do it out of a sense of obligation, and I don't want you to do it when it would make you feel uncomfortable."

Suddenly I remembered that Edward was not the only one whose memories were taken by Aro that day in Italy. _What about Alice? Aro took her memories too. She must feel the same way about it that you do. Have you ever talked to her about it?_

"I haven't really talked to her about it, other than to thank her for what she did. She was thinking of it on the plane, on our way home from Italy. On one hand, she had been almost eager to have Aro take her memories because she thought it might resurrect the human memories she has lost - I've told you that before. On the other hand, I know she did feel violated, in a slightly different way than she does when she unintentionally lets certain thoughts slip around me. But the encounter with Aro wasn't exactly the same for her as it was for me. For one thing, she wasn't able to hear his mind - I could hear all of my memories as he was reading them so I was reminded of all the things I would rather not have shared. Also, since she couldn't hear his mind, she didn't hear his thoughts about her memories. He takes a very sadistic pleasure in his talent, and is quite... condescending about the thoughts of his victims. And finally, Alice has lived with me for decades, and has no memories of her human life, so for most of her existence she has not had mental privacy. She didn't lose as much in that moment with Aro, because she had already lost it. I had already taken it from her." I could see the guilt in his eyes.

_I wish you wouldn't feel so guilty. You are nothing like Aro. You are not sadistic or condescending. You make an effort to ignore what you can't help hearing; he intentionally demands the thoughts and memories of whomever he pleases. Inadvertently overhearing something from someone you love is not the same as deliberately taking it with less than honorable intentions. You are the complete opposite of Aro. Your family loves you and has chosen to live with you all these years despite the lack of privacy. It has been their choice to give up some of their privacy in order to have you in their lives. They obviously feel it's worth the tradeoff, since they've all stayed around and never kicked you out._

"Thank you. I know you're right. It does help to be reminded of that." He smiled slightly. "But I will always feel guilty. Just because I didn't intend to hear something doesn't change the fact that someone's privacy has been invaded. It doesn't reduce their embarrassment at knowing I heard their thoughts."

_Can you tell me... why had you not shared your feelings with me before, about what Aro did to you?"_

"I just didn't want to make you feel bad for me. I want you to be happy - I want _us_ to be happy - not to be worrying about whatever painful things I may have been through in the past. It is just that - in the past. It can't be undone, and I saw no need to bring it up."

_But I want to know these things about you. Because I care about your feelings. Because I love you. Because I want to know everything about you._

"You don't like sharing your pain or struggles with others either. You have always preferred to suffer in silence. I saw you refuse pain medication when you were human just because you didn't want to admit the pain. I would like to know even the negative things you feel too, because I care. I wouldn't want to take away your ability to hide them, but I do wish you felt more comfortable sharing them with me." He grinned sheepishly, realizing he had just proven my point. "So... I do see what you are saying. I will try to be more open with you about these types of things. Without waiting for it to slip through during one of Eli's scans."

_I need to be more open with you too. _I suddenly felt awful as this conversation reminded me of another reason I had been hesitant to let my shield down with Edward all these years. _I lied to you about something. _I almost shielded myself again but I knew he had seen it in my mind even before I consciously made my confession. I was so ashamed of having hidden it from him for so long, and yet I still fervently wished he didn't know. Had I really let that slip out? He didn't need to know about the pain.

"Oh, Bella!" His face was distorted in anguish as he heard what I was trying not to think of. All these years I had let him - and Carlisle and the others - believe that I couldn't remember my transformation, that the morphine had worked, that I was merely "unconscious" for 2 days. He now knew what I had carefully kept from him, that it had only rendered me unable to move, unable to scream, unable to beg for death. That I had held myself silent in the fire after the morphine wore off, so that he wouldn't have to know of my torture. That I had felt the venom he had injected directly into my heart, and each time he had bitten me, forcing more painful venom into my system. How the unfathomable agony had doubled when my broken spine had reconnected. How I was aware of every excruciating millisecond of my torment.

_It's in the past. I saw no reason to bring it up. _I tried turning his words back on him but they were empty thoughts. The truth came pouring forth from my unprotected mind. _I didn't want you to know because I was afraid you would find some way to blame yourself like you always do - don't you _dare _blame yourself. It was my choice. I knew what I was getting into. I'd had morphine and venom together in my system once before, when James bit me, and I had no illusions that any amount of morphine would mask the pain. And it was worth the pain. It was worth it to be with you forever. I would do it again. _He held me closer but did not say anything yet. _I'm sorry I told you, I didn't want you to hurt like this. But I'm also sorry I kept it from you. I should have been honest from the beginning. Can you please tell me what you're thinking? Are you angry with me for lying to you?_

_"_No, I'm not angry. How could I ever be angry with you? And don't be sorry for telling me. I truly do want to know everything - everything you're willing to share. I've actually always suspected that you felt more than you admitted - you always tried to hide your pain even when you were human. But what you went through was so much worse than I imagined. It was more intense than even what I experienced during my own transformation, and I hadn't thought that was possible. I think the injection directly to your heart must have made it worse."

_Do _not_ blame yourself or doubt your method of changing me, Edward. Remember, Carlisle thinks the fact it was injected directly into my heart was the reason it only took two days. I definitely would not have wanted it to last longer, even if the intensity of the pain could have been lessened by some small degree._

"I suppose that's true, though I'm not sure your two days would have seemed like any less an eternity than three." He paused. "As for what I was thinking when you asked earlier... I was just thinking I am not worth it. That I don't deserve you. You held silent after the morphine wore off, just to spare _me_ the pain of knowing about it? You are so much more than I deserve. But I am still glad that you love me so much, however irrationally."

_Don't say that about yourself. _I looked into his amazing eyes. _You _do_ deserve happiness. You _are_ worth it. My love is _not _irrational. _I thought of how many times he had been there for me when I needed him. _You have loved me so selflessly. You are everything I ever needed or wanted. _I wanted him right now. _You make me happy. _I wanted him to kiss me, and he did. _I'm so glad that I have you forever. _He was wearing way too many clothes. They disappeared almost instantly.

"You're a bit overdressed yourself, love."

_Do you think you could help me with that? _My clothing was quickly torn from my body. He began kissing me more deeply, and my shield snapped back into place as I lost my ability to focus on keeping it down.

We didn't have much more conversation that night.


	18. Memory Scan

Chapter 18: Memory Scan

Eli settled into the passenger seat of my Ferrari and I pulled back out onto the main road. It was another sunny day in Hanover; I'm not sure how he ever expected to be able to attend a 5pm class on a regular basis. We had picked him up Wednesday, too, so this would be the second time we'd be walking into this class together.

Dr. Ross had given us a funny look on Wednesday. I knew how it must look to him...Eli's flirtatious comments on the first day, the fact that he had started sitting next to me beginning with the second day of class, the way we always walked out together... and then we started walking in together on Wednesday. He'd probably expect to see us walking in holding hands today. I mentally rolled my eyes. I tried to tell myself it didn't matter what the human professor thought, but the truth was that it really bugged me for anyone to think I could be unfaithful to Edward. I briefly considered asking Edward to start walking me to class so Dr. Ross and my classmates could see him kiss me goodbye. No, that would be a bit immature; high schoolish. We didn't need to stage public displays of affection to prove our love and devotion to one another.

I imagined the scenario anyway, and just as we were really getting into the kiss, I felt a slight twinge against my shield and glanced over at Eli.

"Sorry," he grinned. "Just wondering what you were thinking. You seemed lost in thought."

"Oh, it was nothing. Are you still going to be able to come over tomorrow?"

"Yes, I'm looking forward to it. I've been wanting to meet more of your family." He paused. "Since the time I became a vampire, I've never met anyone I can relate to like I can Edward. Or you, for that matter. I've never really formed relationships with anyone aside from Cora, and I can barely stand to see her once every few years. I assume Edward filled you in on her?"

I nodded. "He said she changed you and was hoping you'd be her mate; it didn't work out, and now she's like an overbearing older sister you don't see very often."

He laughed. "Not the words I used, but an accurate assessment of our current relationship. In any case, what I was going to say, is that this is all new to me, having friends like you and Edward. If I hadn't met the two of you already, I would be extremely hesitant about meeting a coven as large as Carlisle's, but I've seen evidence in Edward's thoughts of the love and admiration he has for each member of the family. The amount of respect he has for Carlisle is just astounding. He really misses all of them. Do you know that since the time I was changed, I've never known what it's like to miss anyone, aside from my human family I left behind? I enjoy interacting with humans, but I've never gotten emotionally attached to one, and I've never formed an attachment to any of our kind because so few are trustworthy. And the few I found who were trustworthy found my hunting methods amusing, so I've always preferred to travel alone. But I find myself trusting your extended family before I even meet them, because I trust Edward's opinions of them. They seem like a rather unusual bunch and I'm really quite eager to meet them."

"Edward and his family were the first vampires I met, so my experience has been sort of the opposite of yours," I told him. "I didn't really begin to comprehend how truly unique the Cullens were until our confrontation with the Volturi when Renesmee was a baby. The non-vegetarian covens who came to witness for us were all so small, and they didn't seem like true families. When it became apparent that the Volturi were afraid of us I was completely stunned. I hadn't realized before how others perceived our family - how our size and collective talent would cause us to be viewed as a very formidable potential opponent. It just shocked me that the Volturi could be afraid of the Cullens, because they - we - are so non-aggressive. We'll defend ourselves if provoked, of course, but we don't seek out fights. To be honest, it still baffles me that the Volturi considered us enough of a threat that they bothered to come over here armed with excuses to wipe us out."

"Aside from the Volturi, no one in their right mind would provoke a coven that large. You basically have a coven of ten, if you count Jake. You even have an alliance with those who should be your natural enemies."

My cell phone went off, interrupting our conversation, and I recognized Alice's ringtone.

"Hey, Alice!"

"Bella! I am _so_ excited about meeting Eli tonight! You're coming straight home after class, right?"

"Are you there already?"

"Yes, we're here at your house. We're getting ready to watch a movie with Nessie and Jake. So you're coming straight home, right?"

"Well, yes, but Eli wasn't planning to be there until tomorrow - "

"No, he's coming tonight. I've seen it. Ask him."

I looked over at Eli, who shrugged and said, "Sure, I can come over tonight."

"Yay!" I could picture Alice dancing around the room in excitement. "Thank you, Bella!" She giggled. "Bye!"

"Goodbye, Alice."

"She seems rather excited about having me rummage through her memories," Eli commented.

"Oh, you have no idea," I told him. "She called me right after we dropped you off on Tuesday night. She's really getting her hopes up that you may be able provide her with some answers about her human life."

"I must admit I enjoy a challenge - I'm eager to try. Most people don't like me accessing their memories. I just hope she likes whatever we find."

I pulled into the parking garage of the science building, and we made our way to chemistry class.

As we approached the doorway to the classroom, Eli stepped closer to me and reached for my hand.

"What are you doing?" I hissed, annoyed, as I jerked my hand out of his reach. "Dr. Ross already seems to think there's something going on between us," I muttered under my breath right as we walked past Dr. Ross. In my peripheral vision I saw Eli nod in greeting to the professor, who returned the gesture looking a bit confused.

"Exactly." He grinned at me conspiratorially. "I'm just messing with him."

"No," I protested. "I don't want him thinking that - he knows I'm married. I'd never be unfaithful to Edward."

"Of course you wouldn't," he agreed. "That's why it's fun to mess with him."

I just shook my head, dismissing the idea, and sunk into my seat in the back row while Eli took a seat just to my left.

"Don't worry, Bella," he insisted, continuing to speak low enough the people around us would not realize we were talking. "He doesn't think poorly of you. He just thinks I'm overconfident, and a bit too persistent. He thinks you're tolerating me out of politeness."

"At the moment, he's not too far off base," I retorted.

He quirked an eyebrow at me but said nothing else. Dr. Ross had begun the lecture, and I spent the next hour ignoring Eli as I diligently took notes on empirical formulas and limiting reagents.

Finally, class was over. I gathered my things, still annoyed at Eli, and started to leave, knowing he would follow me out the door.

"Mrs. Cullen." Dr. Ross touched my arm lightly as I started to walk past him. "Could I speak with you for a moment?"

"Sure." I stopped and turned to look at him. Was he going to ask about Eli? Maybe this was an opportunity to clear up his confusion.

"Hey, Bella, I'll wait for you in the car. Can I have the keys so I can listen to the radio?" Eli extended his hand expectantly. He spoke more loudly than necessary - it seemed he wanted to announce to anyone within earshot that we were together. Was he _trying_ to get under my skin?

I sighed loudly and tossed him the keys. "My car had better still be there when I get down there." I didn't think he would leave without me, but I wasn't sure how he would react to my obvious annoyance with him.

"Is he bothering you?" Dr. Ross asked, as if he could do something about the situation. Eli had started to leave but paused in the doorway.

"No, sir, he's okay. A bit annoying at the moment, but he and my husband have become good friends so I tolerate him." Might as well use what Eli had told me he was already thinking. "He doesn't have a vehicle right now so we've been giving him a ride to class."

"Oh." Dr. Ross seemed perplexed. He lowered his voice to a level he didn't think Eli would be able to hear from where he was standing in the doorway about eight feet away. "His actions seemed a bit flirtatious and inappropriate earlier. If he becomes a problem, let me know and I can have him removed from the course."

"I was doing that for Edward." Eli volunteered. "Her husband." Dr. Ross seemed surprised to see him standing right next to us. I was sure he was also surprised that Eli seemed to have heard his whispered comment. What was he doing?

"Do I want to know?" I asked.

"He wanted me to keep the other guys from hitting on you," he explained.

"He asked you to flirt with me?" I couldn't imagine Edward asking him to do that.

"Not exactly," he admitted, "but it's been pretty effective. None of the other guys have bothered you, have they?"

"Whatever," I told him. "Just wait for me in the car."

He shrugged and finally left the classroom.

"Was that what you wanted to talk to me about?" I asked Dr. Ross.

"No, actually, I was just wondering if the Mr. Cullen who volunteered to teach Dr. Davidson's Friday night biology lab was your husband. I think you said your husband was enrolled in our medical school?"

"Yes, that's him. Tonight's his first night teaching the lab."

"Dr. Davidson was so relieved when he volunteered to fill the vacancy. He only gets his kids on weekends and he was worried he was going to lose even more time with them. He thought he was going to have to teach that lab himself because he didn't expect to be able to find anyone on such short notice - none of the other students who had applied for TA positions were interested in giving up their Friday evenings."

"Well, we don't do anything special on Fridays. I'm glad he's able to help out."

"Dr. Davidson is a good friend of mine, and I doubt he told your husband this solved a personal conflict for him, but please tell him he's doing a good thing. Those kids really need the time with their dad, and I know he really appreciates the time with his kids. I saw your husband's application, too - it was very impressive. Does he help you study for this class?"

"He hasn't so far, but I'm sure I'll be going to him for help as we get further into the quarter. So far it's been a review from the class I had in high school, but you're going at a much faster pace."

"Yes," he laughed. "The first test in this class will cover most of what is typically taught in a high school chemistry class. We should be getting into new material pretty soon, if you only had one year of chemistry in high school."

I nodded. "Well, I'll let Edward know what you said about Dr. Davidson."

"Let me know if your 'friend' gives you any trouble, and please be careful around him - he seems a little strange, and I know he's several years older than you. I can create assigned seating or remove him from the class if he continues to bother you. You can also report him at the Dean's office - we don't tolerate sexual harassment around here."

"Thanks, but he's really not a problem. He's actually become a good friend of our family; he was just getting on my nerves today."

I headed down to the parking garage and found Eli in the passenger seat of my car, listening to the radio, as he said he would be.

"I'm sorry," I told Eli as I sat down in the car, unable to stay upset with him.

"Why?"

"For almost getting you in trouble. He's ready to have you expelled."

Eli laughed. "You didn't do anything - no need to apologize. I'm the one who told him I was pretending to flirt with you. He thinks I'm weird, but he won't do anything."

"Well, then, I'm sorry I was rude to you in class today. Were you really doing that for Edward?" Keeping the male classmates away from me did sound like something Edward might ask of him, but I had a feeling he was executing the plan in his own way.

"Edward didn't specifically ask me to do anything, but I picked up on his apprehension about what the human males in the class were thinking about you and just thought I'd help deter their thoughts a bit. A couple of them have been trying to work up the nerve to talk to you, but I noticed they lost some of their resolve when they saw us walk in together on Wednesday."

"After the first day of classes, Edward mentioned he didn't like the thoughts of some of the guys in class with us, but he hasn't said anything more about it since then. You think he's still worried about it?"

"Not 'worried' exactly, but like you said, he doesn't like their thoughts."

"So what exactly did he tell you, then?" I asked.

"Nothing specific."

"Stray subconscious thoughts?" Had Edward said something to him about sharing with me? The only time Edward had seen Eli since our Tuesday night conversation was on Wednesday when we gave him a ride to and from class. Must have been another mental conversation. Or maybe he had called him.

"Exactly." He took in my look of confusion. "You were right, he said it was fine to share his thoughts with you, conscious or otherwise. Said he was giving his 'official permission.' Didn't give me any limitations, just asked me to let him know if anything seemed to upset you."

"Actually, I've thought more about it since our conversation in the library, and I think I'd prefer if you didn't share his subconscious thoughts with me, or anything you think he'd rather you not repeat. I value my own privacy quite a bit, and I don't want to take his from him."

Eli smiled. "He told me you'd probably say something like that. I must say, I'm a bit surprised at how you've both reversed your positions. That must have been a pretty deep conversation you guys had Tuesday night."

"He told you about that?"

"No details, just that you talked about some things you hadn't before, and he seemed to think it was a good thing. He said he wanted to be more open with you. Not that he was trying to hide anything before, but he realized he has a tendency to avoid talking about things that might be unpleasant, and he realizes that there may be some things he doesn't deem necessary to discuss that you might find of interest. So he told me to use my own judgment on volunteering information even when you don't ask, and he said not to worry about his privacy when talking to you."

"That was really sweet of him, but I do want you to think of his privacy. If there's something you think I should know, that he would consider private, please talk to him about it instead, and see if you can persuade him to tell me himself. I don't want to feel like I'm spying on him all the time."

"You know he watches our chemistry class when he's here on campus on Mondays and Wednesdays, right?"

I laughed. "I suspected as much, but that's not the same sort of spying, because he doesn't get inside my head that way." It used to bother me when he did that back when we were in high school, especially when he would watch how awkward I was in P.E., but I wasn't as self-conscious anymore, and I actually kind of liked knowing my husband was peeking in on me. It kind of made me feel like he was there with me in class, even though I couldn't see him. It made me feel like he was close by, and that was a good feeling. "Does it bother _you_ that he's watching us?"

"No... I probably would have been annoyed if he had done it secretly, but he told me as soon as we met that he'd been watching me, and he let me know that he planned to continue watching the chemistry class, not because he felt the need to continue watching _me_, but because he's on campus then with nothing else to do and just enjoys watching you. I think he mainly listens through my thoughts or the professor's, but he's continued to monitor the thoughts of the other students as well. He knows which ones have their eye on you."

"Is that why you look at me so much during class? Trying to give him a good view?"

He laughed. "You do catch on quickly."

I wondered briefly if Edward would have heard the exchange I had with Eli and the professor at the end of class today, since he would have been on campus for biology lab by then, but I quickly decided he would have been too busy getting the lab started - he would have been five minutes into the lab when I was leaving my class.

I thought some more about Eli's actions in class tonight. "I really don't think Edward would approve of the hand-holding idea, even if you're trying to keep the human guys' thoughts off of me. Next time, just do something to remind them I'm married, instead, okay?"

"You're right. I didn't think that one through very well, and I do apologize. I honestly didn't plan that in advance, One of the guys I was trying to monitor was noticing us coming in together and was encouraged by the fact that we weren't touching, so I was reacting to that thought. I could hardly explain that in front of Dr. Ross, though." He chuckled.

Something suddenly occurred to me. "Please don't tell me the professor is one of the two guys you're keeping an eye on."

"No," he laughed. "I was having fun messing with him, but he wasn't the one I was reacting to. Dr. Ross thinks you're beautiful, of course, but his thoughts haven't crossed the line to being inappropriate."

I pulled into our driveway and saw Carlisle's Mercedes parked in front of the house. Of course; they had Esme with them - Alice and Jasper wouldn't have come on the motorcycle, they would have ridden with Esme.

After parking my car in the garage, Eli and I walked into the house and I was surprised to see Carlisle standing there ready to greet us along with Esme, Alice, and Jasper.

"Carlisle!" I returned Esme's hug and then turned to give one to Carlisle. "You changed your mind! I wasn't expecting you but I'm so happy you were able to come after all!"

"When Alice told me what was planned for tonight I decided I couldn't miss it. My research will still be there when I get back. Besides, I've missed my favorite granddaughter." He smiled as his eyes glanced in the direction of the family room where Renesmee and Jacob were talking quietly, and I could hear a movie playing in the background.

As I was greeting Carlisle and Esme, Alice had run over to Eli and jumped up to throw her arms and legs around him in a huge full-body hug. Though it hadn't seemed like it at the time, she really had been restraining herself that first time Edward took me to his house - if she had greeted me like that when I was human, she would have knocked me to the ground and probably crushed several bones. As it was, Eli was unprepared for Alice, and staggered back a step or two as he regained his balance.

"Oh, we're all going to be such good friends!" Alice squealed. "I _knew_ you were coming tonight. I can't wait to get started. Why did Edward have to teach that class? Now we have to_ wait _for him! All I've seen is me looking confused and you looking surprised, but I think you're going to find something!" She apparently noticed that Eli was trying to disentangle himself from her, and she jumped back down and looked up at him, beaming.

Eli looked at me questioningly.

"I guess I forgot to mention that Alice can be a bit exuberant at times." I laughed. "You'll get used to it."

"Sorry, I do get excited sometimes. Sorry I jumped on you there. But we really are going to be good friends!"

"No need to apologize," he flashed a smile. "Beautiful women can jump on me any time." He winked at Jasper as if to let him know he was just joking, which was completely unnecessary since Jasper could sense his every emotion. Jasper would definitely know if Eli were lusting after his wife, but he seemed quite calm and just smiled politely at Eli.

Alice rolled her eyes at Eli's remark and danced back over to Jasper's side.

"Let's all go into the family room," I suggested.

As we sat down I realized I hadn't actually introduced Eli.

"Eli, this is Carlisle, and Esme." I gestured toward each of them. "Carlisle and Esme, I guess you've figured out by now, this is Eli. He's in my chemistry class, and as Alice has probably told you, he wants to try using his talent to see if he can help her recall any of her human memories."

The three of them rose and shook hands.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, sir." Eli said to Carlisle. "Edward thinks very highly of you." He turned to greet Esme and smiled at her. "And you, as well, Mrs. Cullen."

"Please, call us Esme and Carlisle," Esme told him. "No need for the formalities."

"And you must be Jasper," Eli shook hands with him as well. "I've been looking forward to meeting all of you," he addressed everyone. "I've seen you all in Edward's mind but it's much nicer meeting you in person. It's too bad Emmett and Rosalie weren't able to come. I had hoped to meet them too. I've never met such a large group of our kind. The word 'family' really does seem to describe you much better than 'coven.' The relationships you've managed to develop and maintain simply amaze me."

"We attribute that partially to our diet," Carlisle told him. "We feel it helps us retain some of our humanity, and allows us to behave in a more civilized manner towards one another. I see you've decided to try our diet as well - I'm curious what you think of it."

"I've been on two hunts so far, the first time with Edward and Bella when we found some moose, and a second time on my own when I found a black bear." He grinned, "I think I'm going to enjoy the challenge of hunting large predators. There don't seem to be many of them around here."

"We do try to keep animal populations in mind," Esme spoke up. "We don't want to drive any of our food sources to extinction. That's why we often travel a bit for our hunts, like Emmett and Rosalie going to Canada this weekend."

"Yes, of course," Eli responded. "That's part of what I meant about it being challenging. Not only are they difficult to find in some areas, but there's the need to be aware of where the population needs thinning. I can find a moose around here any time, but the more satisfying prey requires skill and planning."

"Do you think you'll continue with the diet?" Carlisle asked. I could tell from the tone of his voice and the expression on his face that he was probably trying not to get his hopes up regarding Eli's continued commitment to the diet. I noticed Jake was paying close attention to this conversation - he had stopped watching the movie and was watching Eli instead.

"Yes, I'm definitely sticking with it," Eli answered. "I can't tell you how many times in these last few weeks I've mentally kicked myself for not thinking of it on my own. As much time as I've spent outdoors, I've never paid much attention to animals, and they've always instinctively avoided me. I'm not sure I understand your surprise at my decision to adopt your diet. My previous hunting methods were much the same as Edward's during what he refers to as his rebellious period, and I disliked it for the same reasons he did." He took in Carlisle's slightly confused expression and was apparently scanning his thoughts as well. "Oh, I didn't realize he hadn't spoken of those reasons with you. I probably shouldn't say any more."

"That's okay. I know he doesn't like talking about that period of his life, and I've never pressed him on it. I'm sure he feels he disappointed me, and he certainly carries around more than enough guilt. I've always tried not to think of that time when he's around because I knew he felt bad enough without me reminding him. Esme and I were just so happy to have him back."

"That hardly even looks like Edward." Eli must have been seeing Carlisle's thoughts of what Edward looked like when he came home. I imagined Edward with red eyes. Red eyes filled with guilt, remorse, and self-loathing, the rest of his face a mask of indifference as he tried to hide his emotions. I wished I could have been there to comfort him then - but I knew he would never have wanted me to even see him that way. Better yet - I wish I could have been there in the beginning, to dissuade him from leaving Carlisle and Esme in the first place.

"He's much happier now - Bella has made a big difference in his life," Carlisle explained. "You were asking why I was surprised at your decision. It's just that I have had so many conversations with friends and acquaintances over the last few centuries, trying to persuade them to try this way of life, and have never been successful. Only one of vampires I've tried to persuade, other than the ones I turned, has ever given it a try, and he didn't make a serious effort to stick with it. There was one other, who was persuaded by our 'cousin' Kate, who has stuck with it so far, but I understand his motivation was driven by his desire to mate with Kate, rather than an interest in preserving human life. Your attitude is very unusual."

"You seem to think Edward and Bella were successful where you failed, but I really didn't require any persuasion. I've detested taking the lives of humans since the first time I listened in on the last thoughts of one of my victims. As soon as Bella informed me that animal blood was a viable alternative, I knew I wanted to try it, and as soon as I tried it, I knew I would stick with it. Of course animals aren't as satisfying physically, but the ability to feed without guilt, and without feeling compelled to listen to my victim's final thoughts..." He shook his head slowly. "It's definitely worth the tradeoff."

"Another advantage of this diet is that it allows you to stick around in one place longer," Alice said, and I could tell from the expression on her face that she was leading up to something else.

"Yes, I've been thinking I might stay here and actually finish out a degree this time."

"You know what that means, right?" Alice was very eager now.

"Bella, is there something else you should have warned me about regarding Alice?" Eli asked. "She seems a little too excited about the idea of taking me shopping."

Alice giggled. "You need a college student wardrobe. It will help you fit in better."

"I might have forgotten to mention that," I told him. "Just do what she says and you won't get hurt." I laughed. "Do give her some guidelines though. You have to set down some limits early on, or she can get really out of control."

"Come on, Bella, I'm not that bad. You like your wardrobe for this quarter, don't you? And I didn't even make you shop with me this time!"

"That's true," I admitted. "But you're going to make him go and try everything on, aren't you?"

"Not everything," she pouted. "But he has to at least come with me and _decide_ to try things on, so I can really see what they'll look like on him."

"New York City?" Eli exclaimed. "Are you crazy? Tomorrow? I thought you were here to visit your family." He looked confused. "And it's supposed to be sunny tomorrow."

"It's only a couple hours from here, the way I drive. We'll only be gone half the day, I promise. And the weather will cooperate. I've seen it." She smiled brightly.

"You have a problem with my choice of attire?"

"Well, you look...very woodsy."

Eli laughed. "Well, I _am_ very woodsy. I spend a lot of time in the woods. My clothes suit my personality and interests. Is that bad?"

"No, not bad..." Alice hedged, "but I could make you look more like a college student. If you're going to stay around here for 4 years without people noticing you don't age, you need to blend in and keep up with the latest trends instead of wearing the same clothes year after year."

"Alice, dear, maybe we should let him get to know us a little better before you replace his wardrobe," Esme offered.

"We can discuss it more tomorrow." Eli wisely delayed the argument. Alice continued to smile, having already seen the outcome.

The movie, which no one but Jake and Nessie had been paying attention to, finally went off, and they both stood up.

"We're going to go out for a hunt," Renesmee announced. "We'll be out late, since we can sleep in tomorrow, and we may just spend the night in the forest - we haven't decided yet."

"Don't you want to stay around to see if Eli can find Alice's memories?" I asked. "Your dad will be home in another hour and a half."

"Oh, I've already found the memories," Eli announced. "I can see a separate index for human memories, it's just a matter of whether I can pull them up or not, though don't anticipate that being a problem."

"I can't wait!" Alice shrieked. "Hurry up, Edward! Why did I promise him he could watch?"

"As much as we'd love to stay around, I know we're giving Aunt Alice a headache so I thought the memory scan might go better if we were out of the way." Renesmee explained.

"Actually, Alice asked us to leave," Jake added. "She didn't 'see' us being here during the scan. We can take a hint. And we need to hunt anyway. You can tell us all about it tomorrow."

"You hunt with her?" Eli asked. "How does that work? Do you go in wolf form?"

"Yeah, she drains the blood and then I finish off the rest of the carcass. I think I like moose better than she does." Jake laughed.

"Can I watch you phase?"

Jake shrugged. "Sure. Meet me out back. I've got to go change clothes."

Eli went to wait in the back yard. The rest of us didn't bother; we'd seen Jake phase plenty of times before. Jake came back downstairs wearing nothing but cut-off sweatpants, with another pair tied to his ankle. Soon I heard a four-legged Jake running off into the forest and could imagine Nessie riding on his back with her arms around his neck.

Eli came back into the family room. "That was really cool! I'd seen it before in Edward's mind, but it's so much more amazing in person. He's larger in wolf form than what I realized. The pack mind is really fascinating too, at least the small glimpse I got of it before he ran off. I know I heard at least two others - it's amazing I was hearing minds that are all the way across the country, on the West Coast.

Eli sat back down, and we all continued chatting about this and that, waiting for Edward to get home so the memory scan could begin. Eventually Eli asked Jasper a question about the Civil War, apparently in an attempt to draw him into the conversation. That one question was all it took. Eli and Jasper discussed history for the remaining hour, and the rest of us just listened. Jasper's version of historical events was always so much more entertaining than anything any of my history teachers had ever shared in the classroom. While that could be partially attributed to the fact that he had lived through most of the events he was discussing, it also helped that his own enthusiasm and excitement were quite literally contagious.

Finally we heard Edward's car pull in, and I went to the door to meet him.

"Bring him straight in here to the family room, Bella!" Alice demanded. "You can make out with him later!"

I rolled my eyes.

"I saw that!" she yelled.

Edward came in the door, and I greeted him with a kiss, ignoring Alice.

"I saw that, too!" she called from the family room. "Get in here!"

"How was your first day teaching?" I asked.

"I'll tell you all about it later, love." He kissed me again quickly. "Right now, I think everyone's getting a bit impatient waiting for me. I didn't realize Eli was coming over tonight."

"Yeah, Alice called when I was on my way to class and insisted we move this up to tonight."

We walked into the family room, and Edward looked confused. "Where are Jake and Nessie? I thought you were just shielding them."

"They went for a hunt. Alice thought the scan might go better if she didn't have a headache. I think they're going to stay overnight in the forest."

"Can we begin now?" Alice asked.

"I do appreciate you waiting for me, Alice. I wouldn't want to miss this." Edward told her, giving her shoulders a squeeze.

"Yes, I'm ready if you are," Eli answered Alice.

"What do I need to do?" she asked, bouncing with excitement.

"You don't need to 'do' anything, although if you could be still it would be easier for me to read your index."

"Sorry." She stopped bouncing and became perfectly still.

"As I said earlier, I can see a separate index for your human memories, and one for your vampire memories. Apparently your own mind only has access to the more recent index. I wonder what could have happened to cause the index to start over - I've never seen that before. It's almost like your earlier memories were cut off and stored separately so that you wouldn't be able to access them."

"We've theorized that her transformation, or what happened immediately prior to it, may have been so traumatic that her brain just shut it out," Carlisle offered. "We know James was after her when she was changed, but we don't know anything about the asylum worker who changed her."

"What memories do you want me to bring up?" Eli asked. "Your human memories appear to be in simple chronological order. They aren't sorted by pleasantness, but I can tell the ones at the end were rather unpleasant."

"How can you tell that without seeing the memories?" I asked. I still didn't really understand how that index worked.

"Is it related to the colors?" Edward guessed. I didn't feel so bad - Edward could _see_ the index in Eli's thoughts, and still had to ask.

"Yes, more traumatic memories are black or gray, with the darkness indicating how old they are. A recent trauma would be light gray, possibly almost white, whereas an older one would be nearly black. Brown indicates physical or emotional pain. Colors from the rainbow are the better memories. Typically memories indexed in red are euphoric, orange is intensely happy, yellow is pleasant, green is somewhat neutral, blue is mildly sad, and violet is moderately unpleasant. But those definitions may vary slightly based on a particular person's range of experiences."

"So was my human life mostly happy or mostly sad?" Alice frowned, apparently worried about what she might learn.

"There's a lot of yellow, green, and blue."

"So my human life was _boring_?"

"There's some orange and violet here and there. Not much brown or gray until the very end. Fairly typical, but not necessarily boring. Would I be correct in assuming you'd prefer to start with some of the more pleasant memories?"

"Yes, please."

There was silence for a few seconds.

"Would you like to see another?" Eli asked.

"Huh?" Alice looked confused. "I haven't seen anything yet."

"I saw it in your mind, but not in hers," Edward looked at Eli. "She was still wondering when you were going to start."

"That's odd." Eli looked surprised. "People always relive the memories when I pull them up. It must be because it's in the separated index. I guess her mind can't access anything from that one."

"So you don't see her current thoughts while you're scanning for memories," Edward commented.

"No, I scan one or the other - I can't do both at once."

"Well, could one of you describe the memory for me, please?" Alice seemed to be trying very hard not to sound impatient.

"It was summer of 1910," Edward explained. "You were very excited that your cousins from Alabama were visiting. Your aunt and uncle took you and your cousins, and also your little sister, into town for some ice cream. Vanilla. It was cold and delicious and you couldn't imagine anything tasting better than that."

"That's one of my best memories?" Alice's brow furrowed.

"That was orange," Eli told her. "You don't have any red in your human memories. I do see quite a bit of red in the vampire index - I would have to assume those probably all include Jasper and you probably don't want me peeking at them." He winked.

"Trust me, you don't want to peek at them," Edward warned him.

"Can you pull up an orange vampire memory?" Alice asked. "I want to see if I can see those, and it would give me a good comparison for that ice cream memory."

"Sure."

"My Turbo 911! Oh, I loved that car!"

"So I was right... it's just the separated index you can't see memories from."

"Can you show me another orange vampire memory?"

"Yes, let's see that one," Edward said, smiling.

"Edward and Bella's wedding!" Alice smiled. "I guess I was pretty excited that day. So... I guess that must have been some really spectacular ice cream."

"I think the fact that your cousins were there was also a big part of the reason you were so happy that day," Edward told her. "You were apparently very close to them but didn't get to see them often."

"What did Cynthia look like?" Alice wanted to know.

"She was about five in that memory. Long brown hair, pigtails. Facial features were similar to yours. She was wearing a simple blue and white gingham dress, and no shoes."

"No shoes? What about me? Was I wearing shoes?"

"I don't know; you weren't looking at your feet."

"Could you sketch out a picture of Cynthia for me?"

"Alice..."

"Please? It doesn't have to be perfect."

"I can do it," Eli offered. "If someone can get me some colored pencils or something to draw with?"

I retrieved a set of colored pencils we had purchased for Renesmee a few years ago, along with a sketch pad. Eli skillfully sketched out a very realistic picture depicting Cynthia, the two cousins, and the aunt and uncle all sitting in an ice cream shop. The memory was from Alice's perspective so she wasn't in the picture.

"Thank you! This is wonderful!" Alice exclaimed. She studied the picture. "I wish I could really remember them." She stared at the picture a bit longer before asking Eli, "Could you pull up some more orange human memories and tell me about them?" She passed the picture to me, and after looking at it I passed it on to Jasper, Carlisle, and Esme.

"Okay, I'll pull the earliest orange memory."

"This may have been your first premonition," Edward told her, smiling. "It was the first time you saw your baby sister. You were about four and a half, and as you saw her the first time, you were thinking, 'I knew I would have a sister.' Apparently you had told your parents a full year earlier how happy they were that you were going to have a sister and they hadn't believed you."

Carlisle's eyes lit up. "So she _was_ precognitive as a human! I always suspected as much."

"I wonder if I had visions or if I just somehow knew..." Alice pondered. "Can you look for memories a year prior?"

"Sure," Eli replied. "There are fewer as you get younger...you only have what you remembered as a human at the time you were changed, although these seem not to have deteriorated any further after your transformation - being in this separate index seems to have protected them somehow." We all waited several seconds while he scanned memories. "There's where you told your parents you were going to be a big sister. They just laughed, and you didn't understand why they didn't believe you."

"What's right before that? Was there a vision?"

"It skips a couple months before that. You were pretty young. The previous memory is a trip to your cousins' house. I don't see any evidence of a vision. I do see some things in your vampire memories that I suspect are memories of visions - the entries in the index are more transparent - but I don't see anything like that in your human memories. Shall I pull up one of those from the vampire memories to test my theory?"

"Yes, please," Alice answered. "Oh, the day we met you, You would pick that one. Keep going, the first one will return."

"What happened? Only one of those came true...or has the other one not happened yet?" Eli looked concerned.

"My visions change based on decisions people make," Alice explained. "That second vision was when Edward heard your thoughts when you first met Bella. The first vision returned when I called my brother and told him to calm down and go back to the library."

"I have a tendency to overreact sometimes," Edward admitted. "Fortunately I also have a sister who can tell me when I'm about to do something I might later regret."

"I'm glad," Eli laughed. "I wouldn't really want to pick a fight with you. You've got a pretty large family here to back you up."

"Actually, I'd love to see the two of you go at it sometime," Jasper interjected. "Edward wouldn't have the advantage he normally does - you'd be evenly matched anticipating one another's moves."

Eli looked over at Edward. "I think I could take you, one on one," he challenged.

The corners of Edward's mouth turned up in a smile, but before he could reply, Alice redirected the conversation back to herself. "You boys can fight later. We're here to retrieve memories tonight."

"Make sure you do any fighting _outside_," Esme added. "Alice and I put a lot of effort into this house and we don't want to see you wreck it."

"Another orange memory?" Alice requested.

"Here's one from when you were seven," Eli said. "It looks like Christmas morning. You're opening your gift...it was a doll. Your little sister got one too but hers is smaller."

"What else did we get?"

"That's it. You were very excited, though. You already knew what it was before you opened it, but you were very excited to finally have it in your hands."

"There were some outfits to go with the doll so you could dress it up," Edward added. "They appeared to be handmade - your mother probably made them herself. There was also a bottle and a little hairbrush that came with the doll."

"So... my sister had no shoes, and we each received only one Christmas present. My family must have been really poor," Alice mused.

"They don't seem to have been wealthy," Edward agreed. "The house is fairly small. Everyone's clothing appears to be handmade, much simpler designs than what I remember my parents wearing. Also, the area you lived in was fairly rural at the time, so you didn't have any of the modern conveniences my family did, like electric lighting."

"Could we start at the beginning, and go through everything in order?" Alice asked. "I'd like to get more of the big picture of what it was like to be me as a child."

"We can do that," Eli told her, "but I don't think we could begin to get through it all in one weekend, with us needing to explain everything to you verbally. How about if I pull it all up, so that Edward and I will both know your full history? That should only take a few hours. We could then give you a summary, and we can relay the details to you over time. Would that be okay?"

"Yes, that makes sense," Alice agreed.

"Are you sure you want us both taking in _all_ of your memories?" Edward asked. "You haven't had any privacy since you joined our family - are you sure you want to give me all of your human memories as well? I can leave for a while, if you'd like Eli to just pull everything and give us a summary."

"No, Edward, don't be silly. I waited for you to get here tonight and you're going to stay! You already know me better than anyone, other than Jazz, and I don't mind you seeing my human memories. I wish I could see them myself, but having you see them is the next best thing. I need you to have all the details so I can pester you for them whenever you're around."

"Okay, if you're sure."

"I'm sure, Edward." She turned to Eli. "Pull everything up until the unpleasant part at the end. I'm not sure I want to know about that yet. I'd like to hear about my life first, and then I'll probably have you scan for the details of my death later on."

"No problem."

They seemed like they would be busy for a while, so I took Carlisle, Esme, and Jasper out to see the Sequoia I purchased. They agreed it would be nice to have a vehicle that would allow so many of us to travel together. I was pleased that none of them had any negative remarks. We took it out for a drive, and talked about Alice and how nice it was that she was finally going to know about her human past. Carlisle commented that he was very curious about what happened at the end, especially regarding the circumstances under which she was changed, and why her human memories were inaccessible to her, but if she wasn't ready to deal with that yet he didn't want to press her. She would have a lot to take in just learning about the more pleasant and normal aspects of her life.

When we got back to the house, Carlisle went off to Edward's study to work on his research. Jasper, Esme, and I watched three movies before Eli declared they were finished.

"Carlisle, we're ready to give the summary," Edward announced at a normal voice level. Carlisle promptly came back downstairs and joined us in the family room.

"Go ahead, Edward," Eli said. "You know better than I do which parts Alice will be most interested in."


	19. Alice

Chapter 19: Alice

Edward looked at Alice. "You spent most of your childhood in George County, which is northwest of Harrison County, where Biloxi is located. It was a rural area, and as we already noted, your family didn't seem to have much money, but your basic human needs of food, clothing, and shelter were always met. Your dad did some farming, and most of what you ate was raised on your family's farm. You went to a one room school called Brushy Creek School. Your mother taught you how to sew, and your dolls always had a wide selection of clothing. You continued having premonitions, but they didn't always come true, and when they did, most people chalked it up to coincidence. Your parents noticed that you were right the majority of the time, and it seemed to scare them, so they encouraged you to keep these things to yourself. So you stopped telling your parents things except when you felt it was really important, but you and your sister were very close and you could always confide in her. Your cousins were named Mattie and Julia and you only saw them two or three times a year. Mattie was a year older than you, and Julia was a year younger, and you had a close relationship with both of them.

"When you were twelve, your family moved to Biloxi because your father got a job at one of the seafood factories there. You went to a larger school there, and made good grades, but never really felt like you fit in - some of the kids from wealthier families weren't very nice to you. In 1916, you predicted a flood in Biloxi that was caused by a major hurricane that made landfall in New Orleans. At the time, you just knew a flood was going to occur, you didn't realize it would be caused by a hurricane or exactly how widespread the damage would be. That was one of the times you told your parents, and your father somehow persuaded his boss to shut down the factory and send everyone home before the flood hit. The business district of Biloxi ended up under six feet of water - a lot of people died, and buildings were damaged or even washed away. You probably saved your father's life, and the lives of the others who worked in his factory. Some of the kids at school heard that you were involved in getting that factory shut down - some of the ones whose fathers worked there were nicer to you after that, but the others seemed to think it was just luck or coincidence.

"A couple years after that, during the war, you started exchanging letters with a soldier named Nick. He wrote nearly every month and it was always the highlight of your month whenever one of his letters would arrive. You thought you were in love with him, and he declared his love for you as well. He kept writing after the war was over, but never visited, though he mentioned several times that he wanted to. You graduated from high school, and got a job at the local cannery. You worked there for about two months, and there was nothing that seemed unusual to me in those last weeks - no significant visions, and no signs of concern from anyone around you about your mental stability. We didn't look at any of the more negative memories that started in the summer of 1920. Those negative memories cover a time period of about two weeks, so whatever happened to cause you to end up as one of us happened rather quickly."

Alice was quiet and seemed contemplative, and the rest of us seemed to be waiting for her to speak first.

"Wow," she said softly. "My entire human life summed up in just a few sentences. It sounds like I didn't have much excitement, but I guess it could have been much worse. I'd always assumed I had spent at least several months in the asylum, but it sounds like it was no more than two weeks. When I found out a few years ago that the admissions paperwork at the asylum and my tombstone had the same date, I thought that meant that my parents considered me dead when the left me at the asylum, but now it seems like maybe my human life really did end the same day I was admitted. So, Edward... my parents weren't too embarrassed by me? They... loved me?" Jasper pulled her closer and she leaned into him but continued looking up at Edward.

"Yes, Alice. You always felt loved. Your parents seemed to be proud of you and wanted what was best for you. Your precognition scared them, but they ignored it, for the most part, and you never did anything to cause them embarrassment, No one seemed to think you were crazy. You had a good family who cared about one another, and I think your life was fairly typical for the time and location."

"I'll bet your family was devastated when they thought you died," Esme commented. "I wouldn't want to imagine what it would be like to raise a child for eighteen or nineteen years and then lose her." Carlisle put his arm around her and squeezed her shoulder.

"I wonder how Cynthia dealt with my disappearance," Alice looked again at the sketch Eli had drawn of her sister. "I think I want to go visit her daughter. I've kept track of her since I located her. She's eighty-nine years old now and lives in a nursing home. If I don't do it soon, I may lose the opportunity. I wonder what she would remember about her mother."

"You could pretend to be a third or fourth cousin a few times removed who is researching her family history," I suggested, thinking of our encounter with Fred Hoskins in Chicago. "Genealogy has become a popular hobby. I'm sure her caregivers would think nothing of you going in and asking her questions about her childhood and her parents."

"That's not a bad idea," Alice smiled.

"So you didn't pick up on anything that might be a clue as to how she ended up at the asylum or how she encountered James?" Carlisle asked. "She didn't see anyone who looked like a vampire?" He looked back forth from Edward to Eli.

"No, she didn't encounter anyone unusual," Edward answered, while Eli shook his head in agreement. "It must have all happened in those last two weeks we haven't scanned yet."

"Believe me, I'm curious about that too," Alice said, "but I want some time to absorb what we've learned about my life first, and get the details filled in there. I know whatever happened must have been really traumatic for me, and I'd just like some time to enjoy learning the details of my life as a human first, even if they were mostly boring."

"Of course, Alice. You take as much time as you need." Carlisle smiled warmly at her.

"It's entirely up to you," Eli assured her. "I won't peek unless you ask me to."

For the next few hours, we listened as Edward filled Alice in on more of her day-to-day memories, and Eli sketched pictures of the important people in her life at different ages, and pictures of the houses she lived in, the doll clothes she had made, and a few other things Alice indicated would be of interest as she listened to the story of her life.

Around eleven o'clock Saturday morning, Nessie and Jake returned, and we filled them in on what we had learned. Then they headed off to the kitchen for breakfast. I could hear them talking about how much homework they needed to complete before Monday and discussing a research project that was due in one of their classes in two weeks.

Carlisle excused himself to go work on his research some more, and Esme followed him upstairs, saying something about wanting to read. Edward gave me "the look" and I expanded my shield upward to cover Carlisle and Esme on the second floor, in addition to Jacob and Renesmee who were still in the kitchen.

"Are you ready to go shopping?" Alice asked Eli.

"I'll go under one condition," Eli stated.

"What's that?"

"If Edward or Jasper will come with us. I don't want to be stuck discussing fashion for the entire trip. I'll go if one of the guys will come too."

Alice looked at Edward and apparently saw his decision.

"Come on, Jazz. You two can discuss Civil War history some more in the car."

Jasper reluctantly got up and followed Alice to the door.

"Sorry, man," I heard Eli tell Jasper. "I didn't think either of you would agree."

"I pick my battles," Jasper replied. "This one wasn't worth it."

"Bella? Want to come?" Alice looked pleadingly at me

"No, thanks, Alice. You guys have fun." There was _no way_ Alice was getting me to spend the afternoon in Bloomingdale's looking at men's clothing.

"We will!" Alice left with Jasper and Eli, apparently seeing quickly that I wasn't going to budge.

Edward and I went into the kitchen, where Jacob was eating a stack of pancakes.

"How was your hunt?" Edward asked.

"It was fine." Renesmee yawned. "We didn't have any problems finding a moose. I love living here, but the menu choices are not the best."

"What are your plans for the afternoon?" I asked.

"We've got some homework we need to take care of," Jake answered, "and then we'll probably take a nap. It was kind of late when we got to sleep last night."

"What's everyone else doing?" Nessie asked, blushing at Jake's previous comment.

"Alice convinced Eli and Jasper to go shopping with her in New York," Edward told her, "and Carlisle and Esme went upstairs for a while."

A look of understanding came over Nessie's face and her blush, which had started to fade, came back in full force. "I think we may go to the campus library to work on our homework," she said.

Edward nodded. "I think I'm going to go for a run. Taking in a lifetime of memories in one night was mentally exhausting - I need to clear my head. You want to come, Bella?"

"Sure."

"We'll see you later."

* * *

We ran straight to the clearing we'd found on our first night here in Hanover. The leaves on the surrounding trees were now brilliant fall colors. The scenery was much more appealing than the last time we'd been there.

"That was a short run," I teased.

"I just wanted to carve out some time for the two of us." His hands were at my waist as he planted a kiss softly on my lips. "And I thought we'd give Carlisle and Esme some privacy. They think they're quiet enough not to bother anyone, which is true enough when you're shielding them from me, but I thought we'd let them have the house to themselves for a while."

"I was hoping for some time alone with you, too. I was actually thinking of suggesting a run myself, but you beat me to it." I sat down on the leaf-covered ground, and Edward followed my lead, sitting down next to me.

I moved my shield aside. _I love you._

Edward's face lit up. He scooted closer to me, put one arm around me, and touched my face gently with his other hand.

_I have a conversation to play back for you._

He had been about to kiss me again but that stopped him. "I told you, you don't have to do that. Was there something that upset you?" His brow furrowed as he tried to anticipate what it might be.

_No, nothing upset me, but Eli told me some things he heard in your thoughts and I want to share it with you, like I said I would. _Edward was being more open with me, and I was determined to do the same for him.

I brought up to the forefront of my mind, with perfect recall, the memories of the previous night when Eli and I were entering and leaving the chemistry classroom.

I was surprised when Edward laughed when I got to the part where I wouldn't let Eli hold my hand.

_You don't mind that he wanted it to look like he was flirting with me?_

"I knew he was aware that his presence deterred certain humans from trying to talk to you, so it doesn't surprise me much that he did that. He was probably responding to one of their thoughts. If it were anyone else, other than my brothers, I'm quite certain I'd be upset, but your reaction is what made me laugh."

_Why? _I was a little surprised that Edward had immediately recognized what Eli was up to.

"He obviously wasn't expecting that reaction from you." He chuckled. "He probably expected you to trust him and play along. He's no better at predicting your reactions than I was when we first met."

I continued playing back the memories, and he laughed again when I apologized to Eli. "You can't stay angry with anyone for long, can you?"

_And that's funny? Should I have stayed angry longer?_

"No," he chuckled. "It's not funny. It's one of your most endearing qualities." He kissed my nose

I briefly considered pointing out that he was still laughing at me, but opted to proceed with running through all of the conversation with Eli in the car instead - word for word.

Edward tensed a bit when Eli pointed out he had been watching me on Mondays and Wednesdays, but relaxed when he heard my reaction. "I didn't really intend for it to be a secret that I was watching. I told you I had been listening on the first day, and I told Eli I'd be continuing to watch the class, but I should have told you too. I can't honestly say I didn't think to tell you, but I was afraid that if I pointed it out you might ask me to stop. I just enjoy seeing you in class - we don't have any classes together this time, and that's the one way I can be there with you. It really pleases me to hear you don't mind."

_Well, I'm not as likely to fall on my face as I was when I was a human in P.E. Do you watch me in any of my other classes?_

"No more than an occasional peek. I pay more attention in my medical school classes than I did in high school. I don't want to miss those occasional bits of new information I might need to pass on to Carlisle."

_Whose mind do you watch me through the most?_

Eli's and your professor's, like Eli told you. It's about half and half. I can get a picture of the entire class through Dr. Ross, but I can see you better through Eli since he sits next to you and is intentionally looking in your direction for my benefit. I check through the other minds in the class occasionally...it catches my attention whenever someone thinks your name."

_If I lowered my shield during class and thought something at you, would that catch your attention too?"_

"Most definitely." He leaned in for another kiss, emphasizing how much that action would mean to him. "Can I ask you something?" He looked hesitant.

_Of course._

"You don't have to keep your shield up for this. I don't mind if you'd rather organize your thoughts and answer verbally. As much as I'm enjoying your unfiltered thoughts, I don't want you to feel obligated to continue our entire conversation without your shield."

_I know - always my choice. Go ahead and ask. There's nothing I need to hide from you._

"Just now, we kissed and your shield didn't snap back into place. Same thing Tuesday night - I kissed you rather passionately and your shield remained down. I was just wondering - are you gaining more control of it? You haven't been holding back on me, have you?"

_Not much. I didn't have my full concentration on either of those kisses. I was still holding the shield away, and also keeping in mind that there were still other things I wanted to talk to you about before we got too carried away. I guess I was focusing on the shield to make sure we didn't get too carried away, because I wasn't ready for the conversation to be over. But I can't maintain keeping the shield aside when I completely lose myself in you. It has gotten easier to move it away from my mind, though. That's been a gradual change over the years. It isn't nearly as hard to push it away from my mind as it was that first time I did it. I think that's partially because I've had so much practice exercising the shield, and partly because I'm more comfortable now letting my guard down with you. If I really concentrated on the shield, I could probably hold it away longer while you're touching me...I guess I've been a little selfish at times because I'd rather concentrate on you than on my shield._ I felt guilty yet again. I knew how much he enjoyed my thoughts. I would try to keep the shield aside for longer lengths of time instead of abandoning it so quickly for my own pleasure.

"I don't know... I think I'd rather you completely lose yourself in me. I rather like the sound of that," he smirked, but I saw the sincerity in his eyes.

"So do I..." It was easy to lose myself in him. I looked at his lips. The perfect angle of his jaw. His flawless features. His amazing eyes. His hair that was so soft, sticking up in its familiar state of disarray that somehow always looked intentional, as if he had just stepped out of a fashion magazine. How wonderful his strong arms felt around me. I felt the shield begin to retreat back toward my mind, but I managed to continue holding it away. This would take some practice. But I didn't mind practicing with Edward...

"Didn't you say there was something else you wanted to talk about? Something that made you not want to get carried away yet?" he reminded me.

"Oh, that's right. I was wanting to hear about your first night teaching. How did that go?" I let the shield snap back into place. I didn't want to distract him with my thoughts right now - I wanted to hear his.

"Well, it was interesting," he began.

"Did you enjoy it?"

"Overall, yes, I think it was a good experience. It was definitely less monotonous than being one of the students, but there are some disadvantages to being up in front of the class where everyone feels free to stare at me."

"The thoughts of the human females?"

He laughed and rolled his eyes. "Yes, some of them were having difficulty focusing on the lab. I mentioned 'my wife' to them seventeen times, but it didn't do much to stop the idle fantasies. There was one girl in particular, named Chloe, who seems to have developed a huge crush on me. I've been wondering if she's the same one who's in Nessie's study group, but I'm not sure why someone who has morning classes with Nessie and Jake would be in a night class for Biology."

"I don't know - that would be odd. You didn't detect anything in her thoughts about the rest of her schedule?"

"I was trying to block her out as much as possible. It was almost like being in high school again, except that I was in a role of authority. Nearly all the kids who weren't lusting after me were sizing up one another, or thinking about the parties they were planning to attend as soon as the lab was over. I'm not sure why I thought students would be more focused on what they were there to learn with me teaching than with a human teacher. It was really quite challenging keeping them on task. You would think four hours would be more than enough time to complete a simple lab assignment that only has six pages in the workbook - some of the students were really trying my patience. I found myself responding to their thoughts probably more than I should - whenever a pair would get distracted and stop working on the lab I would go over to them and ask if they needed help, and when someone was confused about a simple concept I would review it with the entire class, trying to hurry them along. They were all eager to get finished so they could leave, but they were having trouble concentrating because none of them really wanted to be spending their Friday night stuck in a four-hour biology lab."

"I think it sounds like you're doing a great job, Mr. Cullen. You're probably the best lab instructor this school has ever had."

"It doesn't bother you that there were twenty-six females in the class who were having lustful thoughts about your husband for four hours straight?"

"Well, I can hardly blame them. If I were in your class, I'd be having the same sort of thoughts." I lowered my shield to emphasize my point, focusing my thoughts on what I anticipated Edward and I could be doing in the very near future.

"Now, _your_ fantasies I don't mind seeing." He pulled me into his lap and kissed me just the way I had imagined. "In fact, I wouldn't be opposed to helping you act them out..."

* * *

It was after dark when we returned to the house. It looked as though Alice, Jasper, and Eli had just returned. They were standing in the family room, each of them holding several bags from Bloomingdale's, as Alice animatedly described each purchase and held it up to show Jake and Nessie, who were sitting in the loveseat rubbing the sleep from their eyes - I was guessing Alice's loud return had awakened them from their nap. Esme was curled up with a book, and Carlisle was sitting in front of the TV, though I suspected he had been watching his granddaughter sleep.

"Did you have a good shopping trip?" I asked, eyeing the numerous distinctive brown bags, and hoping for a summarized account rather than the detailed version that was already in progress.

"I'll have you know I behaved myself," Alice insisted. "We only went in one store, and we only shopped for four hours. I kept my word - we were only gone half the day."

"You did restrain yourself," I acknowledged.

"You call this restraint?" Eli laughed, holding up his bags as evidence. "She got _all_ of this for _me_. There are more clothes here than I would wear in ten years! I don't really even have anywhere to store all of this - I'm just squatting in that apartment and I could be forced to vacate at any time. Until today, everything I owned would fit in my backpack. What am I supposed to do with all of this?"

"Take a week's worth with you," Alice told him, "and you can store the rest here. The closet in the guest room is practically empty."

"Lead the way." Eli seemed eager for the opportunity to ditch as many of the new purchases as possible. Edward and I followed them upstairs.

"We can look for a house for you tomorrow," Alice continued. "You need a legitimate address...and plenty of closet space."

"I don't need a house," Eli protested. "I barely need the apartment. I've just been using it as home base because the owners never turned off the electricity and it's a convenient place to use my laptop - kind of secluded, with easy access to the forest. I used that address on my application for admission to the university - they haven't questioned me on it so far."

Alice didn't respond, but I suspected she would not give up that easily. It only took her a couple minutes to have all of the new purchases on hangers and systematically arranged in the closet.

"So this is where your parents stay when they come to visit?" Eli asked me, looking around the room.

"Yeah, well, they will," I answered. "They haven't been here yet, but that's the plan."

"So what are all these other rooms for?" he asked as we stepped back out into the hallway. "This house is enormous! I assume one of these rooms is your daughter's and her husband's, but why so many bedrooms when no one else sleeps?"

Eli's questions led to us giving him a tour of the house, explaining whose room was whose, and that Edward originally selected the house not knowing whether the entire family might be joining join us or not.

The last room we stopped in was Edward's office. Eli paused in front of each of the portraits that adorned the walls - Edward's human parents, and Edward as a human. "Amazing," he observed, no doubt hearing Edward's mental commentary on each picture. His eyes fell upon the cherry box, which was on Edward's desk, and he apparently deducted the contents based on someone's thoughts. "More pictures? May I?" He gestured toward the box.

"Sure," Edward replied.

Eli flipped through the pictures, going at a fairly rapid pace. He had almost reached the bottom of the stack when he suddenly froze.

"Who is this?" he demanded, holding up one of the newspaper articles about the epidemic and how it was affecting Chicago. The picture that went with the article showed a man standing in front of a brick building. The brittle paper was yellowed and the print was a bit faded.

"I don't know," Edward answered. "You recognize him? But how? You weren't changed until 1947; you weren't even born until 1921."

"In the memories of others," Eli replied. "He's the one who changed Cora and two of her acquaintances. She never knew what happened to him - he disappeared when she was still a newborn."

"He's a vampire?" Edward was incredulous. "Surely Carlisle would have known if another vampire were lurking around the hospital. That photograph was made right in front of the hospital I was in when Carlisle found me, and that newspaper clipping couldn't have been from more than a week or two prior to my arrival there. So you're saying he changed Cora, but she never knew his name?"

"Right, she never knew his real name - he had instructed her and the others to call him Master."

Carlisle, having heard the conversation from downstairs, stepped into the room, trailed by Esme, Renesmee, and Jacob.

"May I see that?" Carlisle took the newspaper clipping as Eli handed it to him. He shook his head. "I've never seen him before, and I never encountered the scent of any other vampires at the hospital. If he was only outside, though, his scent wouldn't have remained around long - it was quite windy."

"What does it say about him in the article?" I asked.

"Not much," Carlisle responded. "The caption under the photo says, 'Dr. R. J. Smith arrives for his shift. The hospital had eighty-three new patients admitted yesterday with the Spanish Influenza.' Almost certainly not his real name, and I'm quite certain he wasn't a doctor at the hospital. There's no mention of him in the article itself. He must have just happened to be there when they took the picture."

"So what was he doing with Cora and the others?" I wondered aloud. "Was he trying to build a newborn army?"

"I'm not sure what he was trying to do," Eli answered. "Cora didn't like to talk about it, and she got angry whenever I would scan her memories. I got a few glimpses of him in her memories when I was a newborn, but every time I scanned her memories she would tear off one of my limbs. I became conditioned pretty quickly not to do it." He laughed.

"If she could attack and disable a newborn and come out unscathed, she must have had some good training," Jasper commented.

"A newborn _mindreader_," Jake added. He looked at Eli. "You didn't see what she was planning in time to keep from being dismembered?"

"She attacked me while I was scanning her memories, so I didn't see it coming. I can't scan thoughts and memories at the same time." Eli explained.

"Oh," Jake nodded. He and Renesmee hadn't been here during the memory scan, so they wouldn't have known about that.

The mention of fighting newborns took my thoughts back to the battle with Victoria. The Cullens had made defeating the newborns seem effortless - but they had all been trained by Jasper, plus Alice had her gift. I remembered Jane's reaction, how her eyes had widened in surprise when she learned they had defeated eighteen newborns. Of course she wasn't aware of the help they'd had from the wolves, but I got the impression she'd thought their coven of six had done the impossible in defeating eighteen newborns, with no casualties on their side. Newborns may be unskilled fighters, but they nearly make up for it in brute strength. Jasper was right - Cora must be a skilled fighter. But why was she so adamant about not having her early memories scanned?

"So she had some secret she didn't want you to know?" I asked.

"No, I don't think that was it." Eli's brow furrowed as if he were trying to think of how to best explain it. "I think she didn't like being forced to relive certain memories, and she thought I was going too far in invading her privacy. She wanted me to read her mind, but she wanted that because she was hoping to control me with her thoughts. She had envisioned a lover who would cater to her every whim without having to ask or explain what she wanted. She didn't like me being the one in control, me being the one to select which memories she would be subjected to. I never detected anything in her thoughts about there being any sort of big secret she was keeping from me. There wasn't any particular part of her past that seemed more off-limits than the others. She just didn't like me pulling up her memories."

"You said you also saw this vampire in the memories of two others. Did you learn anything more from those scans?" Edward asked.

"I got a glimpse of him from different angles, but my scans didn't last long enough for me to learn anything new about him. Each of these other two vampires visited us, separately, when I was still a newborn, and I tried scanning them mainly out of curiosity about Cora's past, but they had the same reaction she did. I learned quickly never to scan a vampire's memories unless I was already in a hostile situation. In a fight, pulling up someone's memories randomly can make a great distraction and can cause my opponent to lose focus in the fight. Otherwise, it usually starts a fight, at a time when I'm at a disadvantage, not being able to hear their thoughts to know how or when they will attack."

"What were the names of these other two?" Carlisle asked.

"Jesse and Fernando."

"Never heard of either of them," Carlisle commented. He looked around at the rest of us questioningly and everyone shook their heads. None of us had encountered them before.

"They're both nomads," Eli explained. "As far as I know they're still around, and they each travel alone. I haven't seen them since I was a newborn, but Cora mentioned them the last time I saw her. Cora's never really been friends with them but for some reason they check in with her occasionally. I've speculated that the three of them must have some sort of weak bond due to them having been changed at the same time by the same person. Jesse I don't know much about. Fernando was originally from Spain, and had come to the U.S. to attend college, primarily because he was interested in learning English - I guess he wanted to immerse himself in the language. He's fluent in both languages now, although I'm not sure how much English he learned as a human compared to how much he learned after his transformation."

"Are any of them talented?" Jasper wanted to know.

"I think Fernando is talented, but it's an indistinct sort of talent, kind of hard to describe. It's like he can think of an object or something he desires, and know how to locate it or obtain it."

"Like a tracker?" Edward asked.

"Not exactly. He'd probably be good at tracking, but it's not limited to the ability to locate people. He can think of a situation, or desired outcome, and instinctively know what step he should take next, in order to get closer to the end result he wants. He can't tell you how or why, he just knows what he needs to do. He doesn't seem to plan his strategy out in advance; it's like whenever he needs to make a decision he instinctively makes the right one. I haven't seen him do it myself, but Cora has told me about it. She always thought it was strange how his seemingly random decisions always got him closer to his goals. The other one, Jesse, she never mentioned as much. I'm not sure if he's talented or not."

"What about Cora?" Carlisle asked. "Is she talented?"

"Yes, she is able to know whether someone's intentions toward another person are good or bad. She has found it useful in avoiding conflict - if she detects someone's intentions toward her are not good, she can usually find a way to excuse herself from the situation, rather than getting into a fight. Most of our kind are fairly obvious when they intend ill will toward someone, though, so it's not something she found useful very often."

"Her talent reminds me of someone we know - Maggie. She can detect whether someone is lying to her," I told him.

"Yes, it's similar in a way," Eli acknowledged, "but it's possible for someone to be technically telling the truth when they wish you harm, and it's possible for someone to lie to someone in order to protect them. I guess you could say Cora gauges trustworthiness, rather than honesty. I can usually gauge either, or both, by scanning someone's thoughts, so I've never given that much thought to her talent...it seems rather limited to me."

"What year was Cora changed?" Carlisle asked.

"It was 1919. She and the other two were all changed that same year, a few months apart."

"What part of the country were they in?"

"Cora was originally from Kentucky, but I'm not sure if that's where she was changed, and I don't know where the others were changed either. The college Fernando attended was in North Carolina. I have no idea about Jesse. I wasn't aware of any of them ever being in Chicago, but I guess it's possible. This picture was made about fourteen months before Cora's transformation, though, so our mystery guy could have been anywhere by then."

"It's just bizarre that this guy was right outside the hospital where my family and I were, and about a year later he created Cora who created you," Edward said to Eli.

"You know what they say," Eli replied. "It's a small world."


	20. Charlie's Visit

Chapter 20: Charlie's Visit

"How long has it been since the last time I helped you cook for Charlie?" Jake asked as he chopped cucumbers for the salad for tonight's meal.

"Did you _ever_ help me cook for Charlie?" I questioned. Certainly not since the time I'd become a vampire - he was always with Renesmee. My human memories - the ones without Edward in them, anyway - were getting too foggy for me to be sure... I could recall Jacob cutting himself in Charlie's kitchen and me cleaning up the blood, but we were doing dishes then, at least I think that's what we were doing. "You used to help with Charlie's dishes sometimes, but the last time you did that was when we left Edward alone with Charlie so he could encourage him to talk to Sue."

"Yeah, that was entertaining," he snorted. "I'm not sure if that was more awkward for Edward or for Charlie!"

"Probably Charlie," I laughed. "He was getting dating advice from what he thought was an eighteen-year-old boy."

"Yeah, but giving your father-in-law kissing advice? That would have to be really up there on the awkwardness scale."

"Well, _your _father-in-law doesn't need any advice in that area, so you won't ever have to worry about that one," I smirked.

"I don't know, I could probably teach him a thing or two. Nessie and I would be happy to demonstrate technique."

"Not necessary," I assured him.

"You know, it's still kind of weird to think of you as my mother-in-law. That has to have earned you at least twenty years. So that would make me thirty-five and you fifty-five."

"Oh, I don't know. I think you earned a few years for becoming a married man and for running your own auto-repair business in La Push. And I lose some points for being married to a seventeen year old. So you're forty and I'm eighteen."

"Ah, but you gain those points back, and then some, for being married to a one hundred and fifteen year old. That would make you what, a hundred and fifty?" Jake roared with laughter.

I just glared at him.

He raised an eyebrow. "Funny how you wanted to emphasize how much older you were when we were both normal human beings, and now that neither of us is aging you want to make yourself younger than me."

"Fine. I'll be older than you. I'm certainly more mature. But I'll always _look_ younger than you." If I looked older than Jake, I looked older than Edward.

Jacob just rolled his eyes.

I considered sticking my tongue out at him, but that would give him ammunition against my maturity claim.

I heard a yell from the family room where Eli was playing a video game. Apparently he got to the next level or something. He had come home with me after chemistry class tonight because he wanted to meet Charlie, and also because he claimed his apartment was really boring. Edward wouldn't be home from teaching his biology lab for at least two more hours, and Renesmee had gone to the airport to pick up Charlie. Sue hadn't been able to come after all, and Renesmee much preferred the speed of the Vanquish to the Sequoia, so Jacob had volunteered to stay home. Apparently he didn't find the idea of having Charlie sit in his lap all the way home from Boston very appealing.

Jacob still wasn't entirely comfortable with Eli yet - I suspected the burgundy eyes were still fresh in his memory - so he had followed me into the kitchen, leaving Eli to play video games on his own. Fortunately, Eli didn't seem to mind.

The smell of the steaks and baked potatoes was beginning to permeate the kitchen. I had been holding my breath as much as possible, drawing in air only as necessary to converse with Jacob, but the scent was becoming much stronger as the food was nearly finished cooking.

I looked at my watch. "I hope they get here soon."

"Me too," Jacob agreed. "This smells really good."

I had been timing the meal to be ready at 8pm. I had calculated that they should be here by then, with the assumptions that (1) Renesmee drove within the speed limit on the way home, (2) there were no problems collecting Charlie's luggage (it had gotten lost on one of his previous trips to visit us in Wisconsin), and (3) there were no major traffic delays beyond what is typical for Boston on a Friday night.

I was beginning to worry the food would get cold, when I heard the car pull up outside.

Jacob and I put the food on the table just as Charlie walked into the kitchen, followed by Renesmee.

"Hey, Bells!" Charlie's face broke into a smile when he saw me, and I ran over to hug him.

"I've missed you, Dad! You've got great timing - we just put the food on the table."

"It smells delicious!"

"Can I take your coat, Grandpa?" Nessie took Charlie's jacket as he shrugged it off and went to sit at the table. "I'll take this and your luggage up to the guest room."

Charlie looked at her for a moment like he wanted to protest, but he apparently decided to keep his mouth shut and let her carry the luggage upstairs. It was still a little hard for him to accept that his little granddaughter was so much stronger than he was.

I sat down next to Charlie, and Nessie returned and sat down next to Jake. Jake and Charlie were piling their plates high with food.

"You don't want anything at all?" Charlie asked Renesmee, noting that she did not even have a plate.

"No, we all hunted this afternoon. I'm not hungry."

"This smells so good, I think I'd have to eat it even if I _wasn't_ hungry," Charlie remarked. He looked up at her. "This doesn't smell good to you?"

"No," she giggled softly. "I'm actually relieved that I don't have to pretend to eat in front of you anymore. It's really hard to act like something tastes good when you're trying so hard not to gag."

"So how does it smell to you?"

"Umm... I probably shouldn't use those words at the table while you're eating."

"Ah. I see."

"More for us, huh, Charlie?" Jacob said.

Just then Eli shouted at the video game again, and Charlie looked up, surprised. "I thought Edward was teaching a class tonight? Who was that? Is one of his brothers here?"

"Oh, that's Eli," I told him. "He's in my chemistry class - he and Edward have gotten to be good friends. I guess Nessie didn't know he was coming over. He was bored and I told him he could hang out here. He's playing a video game right now - I'll introduce you when you finish eating."

"How was your flight, Charlie?" Jacob asked.

"Long." Charlie looked really tired. "I made the four hour drive to Seattle last night and stayed in a hotel because my flight left at 7am. I've been up since four-thirty this morning. The flight was about seven hours, with a short stopover in Minneapolis, then of course it took about two and a half hours to get here from Boston."

We continued to talk and laugh while they ate, and after dessert I quickly put the dishes in the dishwasher and we went into the family room.

Eli turned off the video game and stood to shake hands with Charlie. "I'm Eli; you must be Bella's dad."

"Yes, you can call me Charlie. You're..." Charlie's eyes widened and I could hear his heart beating faster.

"Yes, he's a vampire." I should have told him that earlier; of course he would have assumed that a friend from school was human.

"I didn't mean frighten you," Eli told him. "I can leave."

"No, you don't have to go. I'm not frightened, I just wasn't expecting..."

Eli gave him an understanding smile and stepped back to leave a more comfortable distance between himself and Charlie. "Your heart rate and your thoughts tell me otherwise."

"Honestly, I'm not frightened, just a little surprised. I know Bella wouldn't invite you here if you weren't friendly." Charlie seemed to be relaxing a bit. "You can hear thoughts like Edward?"

Eli nodded and sat back down. "It works a little differently, but yes, our abilities are similar. That was part of the reason I was wanting to meet you - Edward said he can't hear all of your thoughts, and I was wondering if it would be the same for me. Apparently it is - I can't get a good read on you either. Your thoughts seem muffled. What is odd, though, is that your memory index is perfectly clear. Would you mind if I pulled up a random memory? It would be like you were remembering something you hadn't thought of in a while, except I would see it too. If it isn't muffled, that is."

"Um, I guess that would be okay." He sat down next to me on the sofa.

"Hmmm... It _is_ muffled. I'm getting calm, peacefulness, and lots of water. I think there's someone with you but I can't see well enough to describe him or her."

Charlie was smiling, his eyes far away. "Fishing with Billy and Harry - the day I first met Harry." He looked up at Eli. "So you made me remember that?"

Eli nodded. "I selected a random pleasant memory from several years ago."

"Well, you were right, I hadn't thought of that in a while." Charlie was still smiling.

"So I can trigger them for you, but I can't see them myself," Eli murmured to himself.

"Can you make me remember something else?" Charlie asked.

Eli triggered a few more memories for Charlie, who seemed to be enjoying it quite a bit. Most of the memories involved fishing or visits from me - those were apparently his most pleasant memories. Eli was still entertaining Charlie with his own memories when Edward got home.

"Hello, Charlie, I see you've met Eli." Edward took off his unnecessary jacket.

"Yeah, this is really neat how he can make me remember things I'd nearly forgotten." Charlie's eyes narrowed. "Can you do that too?'

"No," Edward chuckled. "I just hear everyone's current thoughts. I'm not able to be as selective about what I hear as Eli is."

"I can only hear one person at a time, and only if I'm making an effort to do so," Eli explained. "And I can't hear from as great a distance as Edward."

"We've been told no two gifts are exactly the same, and so far with all the vampires I've met, it seems to be true," I added. "Even when the ability is similar, like the ability to read minds, it works differently in each case."

Charlie's eyes narrowed again. "Do the rest of you have different gifts?" he asked, catching on to my implication that there were other gifts. "I know you said the last time that you hadn't told me everything yet..."

"It's Carlisle's theory that everyone has something from their human life that gets enhanced during the transformation," Edward explained. "Not all of us have obvious supernatural gifts like mine, but we all seem to have a special trait. Sometimes it's something physical, like Emmett's strength or Rosalie's beauty. Sometimes it's a personality trait, like Carlisle's compassion or Esme's capacity to love and her tendency to want to take care of others. Some can influence others, like Jasper - he can sense and influence emotions. You can probably remember some times when you felt unnaturally calm around our family in a situation that had started to get tense - that was Jasper. Alice, I think, has one of the most useful and interesting gifts - she can see the future, or at least possible futures. She's helped us avoid a lot of bad decisions."

"She did always seem to know what was going on. I guess that explains a lot of things," Charlie mused. He appeared to be deep in thought for a moment, and then turned to look at me. "What about Bella?"

"Mine is defensive. I can block the talents of others that work on the mind, like Edward's and Eli's. They're automatically blocked from my mind - that was true even when I was human. Now that I'm a vampire, and I can extend my shield to protect others as well. I keep Jake and Nessie shielded a lot to give the newlyweds some privacy."

"There are some thoughts I prefer not to overhear," Edward added.

Charlie laughed. "I can imagine."

"Would you like to see my gift, Grandpa?" Nessie asked.

Charlie looked up, seeming a little surprised. "Yes, of course. What can you do?"

"It's easier if I show you," she told him. She walked over to where he was sitting. "I need to touch your face," she warned him. She placed her hands on his face, and his eyes widened. He blinked several times and looked around.

"What was that? It looked like me, when I was younger. How did you do that?"

"That was my first memory of you, when you were holding me when I was a baby. I have the ability to share my thoughts or memories with others. I can even do it through Mom's shield."

"Now that's really something. Can you show me some more?"

She showed him some more for the next several minutes, and he seemed to want her to continue, but he was yawning and we could all see he needed to go to bed. He'd had a very long day traveling here.

"I can show you more tomorrow," Nessie promised him. "I really need to get to bed, and I think you probably do too."

"I am rather tired," he admitted. "Can someone show me to my room?"

"Follow us," Jake said.

"Good night!" Nessie got up when Jake did.

Jake and Nessie led Charlie upstairs. I heard water running as Charlie made use of the bathroom, and Jake and Nessie's door closed.

"How was biology lab tonight?" I asked Edward.

"About the same, but I was more mentally prepared for it this time."

Eli suddenly started laughing. Edward and I both glared at him.

"There are three people trying to sleep upstairs!" I reminded him.

"And it really wasn't funny," Edward insisted.

"I'm sorry." He continued laughing, though at a lower volume. "Edward, you have to tell her about Chloe."

"He mentioned her last week..." I turned to Edward. "What did she do tonight?"

Edward rolled his eyes. "She kept asking me ridiculous questions - things even _she_ already knew the answers to - just to get me to come over to her lab station to help her. She wanted me closer so she could ogle me more easily." He rolled his eyes again. "I told everyone to discuss any questions with their lab partners before coming to me, but her lab partner was her friend and pretended not to know the answers. So I asked this kid named Zach to be her partner instead, and put Zach's partner with her friend. Zach is easily the smartest kid in there, and his original partner was his roommate, who used to be his best friend, but just stole his girlfriend, so he was more than happy to switch. He also thought Chloe's earlier questions were absurd, so I knew he wouldn't play along with her."

"That is kind of funny. I think you handled it well," I remarked.

"What was funny was the look on her face when she realized he was serious about switching her lab partner!" Eli laughed some more.

"Did she and her friend try to protest the switch?" I asked.

"She did try to tell me she preferred to stay with her original partner, but I said it was better for the less experienced students to be paired with someone who had a stronger background in biology. I think she was too stunned to keep arguing. Zach had already brought his belongings over to her station, and Chloe's friend didn't even try to argue, she just moved over to join Zach's roommate. She was kind of annoyed at Chloe for making her look stupid in front of the class."

"So she didn't ask you any more questions after that?"

"No," Edward chuckled. "She kept trying to come up with questions that would stump Zach, but she wasn't able to. He's a pretty smart kid."

"Did you ever ask Renesmee if it's the same Chloe that's in her microeconomics study group?"

"Yes, shortly before I went to teach the lab today I asked her to show me the Chloe she knows, and it's the same one." He grimaced. "And their study group is coming over here tomorrow."

"Did you tell Nessie she has a crush on you?"

"She figured it out when I asked about her. Apparently Chloe has been telling her about her 'hot' lab instructor. It hadn't occurred to her that it was me until I asked to see what the Chloe she knew looked like. She thought it was hilarious."

"I think I'm going to run home now," Eli told us. "Thanks for having me over. I enjoyed meeting your dad, Bella. I guess I'll see you on Monday. You two have a nice night." He winked and was out the door before either of us could respond.

"Why did he leave so suddenly?" I asked Edward.

"I believe he was picking up on my stray subconscious thoughts."

"Which were?"

"Only of you, my love." He scooted closer to me on the sofa.

"We were talking about Chloe..." My forehead wrinkled in confusion, and I searched his eyes as he leaned in to kiss me.

"Yes, but you're sitting here so close to me." His lips brushed against mine as he spoke. "As much as I try to control my thoughts with Eli around...there are some thoughts I just can't control."

"Everyone's asleep?" I climbed into his lap.

"Yes, they're all asleep. Eli thought I might want to take advantage of the time alone with you." He kissed me, delaying my response.

"How considerate of him." I wove my fingers into his hair.

"Yes, I suppose there are a few advantages of having a mindreader for a friend."

* * *

The next morning the five of us settled in the family room once again. Charlie and Jake looked full and comfortable after consuming the large breakfast Edward and I had prepared. Renesmee had eaten her typical small helping of eggs; Charlie had seemed pleased to see her eating some "normal" food.

"What did you want to do today, Dad? Would you like to see Dartmouth's campus?" I asked.

"Maybe later. I'd like to see it, but I'm too full to move right now. Could we just sit around and catch up for a bit?"

"Sure. What have you and Sue been up to?"

"Well, we finally got the new appliances installed in the kitchen, and we got a new kitchen table - you'll be pleased to know that the chairs all match now. You'll have to come see it sometime."

"We'll try to visit during winter break," I assured him. "I'm sure it looks great."

"Have you been driving the Volvo?" Edward asked him.

Charlie nodded. "We drove it to Seattle once, and Sue has been driving it some around town. Mrs. Stanley saw her at the grocery store and asked about you guys. She gave her the same story you gave Newton in that email you sent. I hope that was okay?"

"Yeah, that was perfect, Dad."

"So how is school going?" Charlie asked.

"I'm really enjoying my classes. It's nice to be out among people again."

"Are you having to study a lot?"

"Well, Edward and I have perfect recall, and Nessie's is nearly perfect, so as long as we listen in class and read the assignments, we should have perfect scores on all our tests. Freshman Studies requires a little more effort because of all the writing assignments, but the reading material has been interesting. I think Introduction to Computer Science is my hardest subject, mainly because it doesn't interest me as much. I signed up for it because I wanted to try something different but I don't think it's for me."

"And you, Edward?"

"My classes are about what I expected. Most of them are repeats but there are occasional new pieces of information thrown in, and there are a few theories that have changed in the last thirty years, so those are the things I'm listening for to pass along to Carlisle."

"Nessie said you were teaching a class last night. So are you a professor now, too?" Charlie asked.

Edward tried to stifle a grin. "No, they have medical students teach the labs for the lower level classes. They're called Teacher Assistants, or TAs."

"How's that going?"

"Honestly, it's been more challenging than I expected to keep everyone focused enough to complete the lab within the allotted time. Since the lab is on Friday nights, everyone is thinking of the things they'd rather be doing instead, and of course I can hear all of their thoughts, so I know they're not paying attention even when they're trying to look like they are. It's been difficult to get them to finish an assignment within the four hour period."

"How about you, Nessie?" Charlie asked. "How are you liking college?"

"Oh, I love it! Jake and I have made lots of new friends. We have a study group for microeconomics that's meeting here this afternoon so you'll get to meet some of them. A lot of them are in my marketing class, too. Then I have psychology in the afternoons - that's been interesting, and I have Freshman Studies like Mom and Jake - it's a required course for all freshmen. Lots of reading and writing in that one."

"I guess I'm next," Jacob volunteered. "I have the same classes as Nessie. They're not quite as easy for me as they are for her, but I've been keeping up pretty well. I'm learning a lot of useful things in the business classes, but I could do without the Freshman Studies. The reading material is plain stupid - Bella was just being polite. Psychology isn't too boring but I'm not sure how useful it is for what I plan to do."

Charlie nodded. "So these friends you mentioned," he looked at Nessie. "Are they all... human?"

Renesmee laughed. "Yes, they're all human. Eli's the only vampire we've encountered around here. Fortunately he turned out to be friendly."

"Charlie, speaking of the human friends," Edward began, "when they come over this afternoon for the study session, we'll all need to fall into our public roles. I'm Nessie's older brother, and you aren't her grandfather - you're her sister-in-law's father. You've known Jake since he was born, but you'll need to remember that he was born in 1996, not 1989, so you'll need to be careful if you mention things that happened in the past - for example, don't refer to anything in the 1990s as if he would remember it. Also, you've only known Nessie since they've been married. They've been married for a year, and Bella and I have also only been married for about a year. If there's any mention of my family, Carlisle and Emmett are both my brothers, and Alice is my sister. Esme and Rose are my sisters-in-law, and Jasper is my brother-in-law. Carlisle is playing a younger role here, and the others are playing older roles than when we were in Forks."

"Okay, so I'm still Bella's dad, Nessie is your sister I don't know very well, Jake is 20 years old, and Carlisle is your brother? Did I hit all the main points?"

"I think you've got it, Dad," I said.

"Also," Edward continued, "I didn't meet Nessie until three years ago because we were separated when she was a baby and we were adopted by different families and she just tracked me down three years ago. Basically the same story we gave Renée, but without the secret agent aspect."

"I think I've got it," Charlie replied, "but I'll try to keep my mouth shut while they're here so I don't mess up."

I laughed. "You'll do fine, Dad."

"So tell me more about your stay in Chicago. You said you found the pictures from when Edward was human?"

"Yes, we'll have to show them to you. They're up in Edward's office. Would you like to go see them now?" I asked.

"Sure."

We all made our way up the stairs and crowded into the office.

"So that's you, huh?" Charlie commented. "You haven't changed much."

Edward explained how old he was in each picture and pointed out his parents, telling Charlie their names.

"The look like they were good people," Charlie remarked.

"They were," Edward replied emphatically.

Charlie looked through the pictures in the box next, and then we gave him a tour of the house - there were still several rooms he hadn't seen on the second floor.

"Well, you have a nice place here," Charlie observed as we went back downstairs. "So this house is all paid for? And all this new furniture?"

"Yes, sir."

"And that new Sequoia Nessie mentioned?"

"Yes, it's paid for too."

"So the Sequoia's yours, and Bella still has her Ferrari, right?"

"She still has the Ferrari, but the Sequoia is sort of a family vehicle. Bella bought it so we'd have at least one vehicle that could seat more than two people. I have another sportier car that's mine."

"What did you get?"

"It's a Veyron."

I looked at Charlie, a bit nervous about his reaction.

Charlie's brow furrowed. "Don't know that I've heard of that one. Can I see it?"

We led him into the garage and I flipped on the lights.

Charlie whistled when he saw the car. "I don't think I've ever seen one of those before. It looks fast. Fast and expensive. Am I right?"

"Yes, sir, and it's paid for too," Edward answered, apparently trying to anticipate the next question.

"How fast is it?"

Edward hesitated.

"You can tell me," Charlie insisted. "What's the highest speed you've reached?"

"I think this might fall under 'need to know', Charlie. I know you don't want me to lie to you, but I honestly think you'd rather not know the truth."

Charlie considered that for a moment. "After everything you've already told me? It can't be that bad. I promise not to arrest you."

Edward stifled a grin. "Well, in that case, if you're sure..."

Charlie nodded, looking at Edward expectantly.

"It's the fastest car on the market, and Rosalie has made some enhancements." He paused. "I've had it up to 298 mph."

Charlie just stared at him in disbelief for a moment, his eyes wide. "You're serious? If I picked that up on my radar I'd think it was an aircraft passing overhead, or some sort of malfunction. You really drive that fast?"

"You've seen how fast we can move, Dad. For us, driving at the speed limit is like watching a movie in slow motion. We have amazing reflexes. Even when we're going that fast, we're aware of every detail and can clearly see everything around us, and we have plenty of time to react to any changes, like if another driver cuts in front of us. Avoiding obstacles is practically effortless."

"You drove that fast in Forks?" Charlie asked.

"No, I didn't have this car then," Edward answered. "The Vanquish can do about 200 mph, but that wasn't within the city limits of Forks, it was out on the interstate."

"How many tickets have you gotten?"

"I've never gotten a ticket." Edward tapped his temple. "Built-in radar detector. I've been driving for nearly a century, and I've never had a wreck - I have a perfect driving record."

"But you're breaking the law," Charlie accused.

"It's a human law, Charlie. Created by humans, for the protection of humans, and enforced by humans." Edward shook his head. "I'm not human."

"It's dangerous..."

"I assure you I'm a safer driver than any of the humans out there. We're not putting anyone in danger."

"Well, I don't like it, but I guess I don't have any choice but to look the other way." Charlie shook his head. "I don't suppose I could arrest you if I tried, could I?"

"Not unless I let you," Edward responded. "Besides, you promised not to." He grinned at Charlie, apparently trying to lighten the mood.

Charlie was quiet for a moment.

"You have a question about a gun?" Edward asked, his eyebrows raised.

"I thought you couldn't hear my thoughts," Charlie complained.

"Not the details, that's why I had to ask what your question was. You're not planning to try to shoot me, are you?" Edward tried to suppress a grin and did not quite succeed.

"No. You know I'd never do that. I don't think you'll be too surprised, though, if I tell you it used to be a fantasy of mine."

"No, that's not surprising at all. You came pretty close when I told you Bella and I were getting married."

Charlie's eyes narrowed. "So what would have happened I'd shot you? You wouldn't have been hurt?"

"No, you can't hurt me. What I would have done if you had fired a gun at me would have depended on where we were. If we were outdoors and I knew there was no one behind me, I would have just stepped aside so the bullet would have missed me. I would have moved fast enough that you probably wouldn't have even noticed my movement. If we were indoors, I wouldn't want your house to be damaged, so I would have caught the bullet in my hand and hid it in my pocket, and then pretended it missed me. If I just let it hit me it might ricochet and hit you or someone else instead, and a gunshot wound is the last thing you need when you're in the company of a vampire."

"You could catch a bullet with your bare hand and not get hurt?" Charlie seemed amazed.

Edward shrugged. "It might sting a little, but it couldn't penetrate the skin. I've never let a bullet hit me before, though, so I can't say for sure what it would feel like."

Charlie just stared at him.

"Would you like to go out back and use me for target practice?" Edward offered. He sounded serious but I was fairly certain this was not something he would ever actually do. Was he trying to be funny?

Charlie's eyes widened. "No, I -, I could never fire a weapon at you, Edward. No matter how sure you are that you can step out of the way, I wouldn't take that kind of risk."

"That's good to know," Edward smiled. "I was only joking, though. I wouldn't really suggest that we go out and play with guns. There are too many ways for you to hurt yourself."

Charlie gave Edward a look that seemed to say, "I know how to handle myself with a gun," but he didn't argue.

We all went back to the family room and talked some more. Then, after fixing a quick lunch of sandwiches for Charlie and Jake, we decided it was a good time to show Charlie around campus. It was nearly time for the study group to arrive, and I suspected Edward was hoping to avoid Chloe.

Charlie seemed to enjoy the drive around campus, and I could tell he was intensely proud of me for attending such a great school. The afternoon was cloudy enough that we decided to get out and complete the tour on foot. Three hours had passed by the time we arrived back at the house, and Edward was not-so-pleasantly-surprised to see three unfamiliar vehicles in the driveway - it seemed the study group was still there.

Edward groaned as we pulled into the garage.

"What's wrong?" Charlie asked.

"Chloe?" I guessed.

Edward nodded and then pinched the bridge of his nose. "She's waiting for me. Nessie apparently told her that I'm her brother, and she's determined not to leave until after I get back."

"Who's Chloe?" Charlie asked.

"She's one of Nessie's friends in the study group," I explained, "and she's also in the lab Edward is teaching. All the girls in the lab have a crush on him, and she's the worst one."

Charlie started laughing.

"Dad, it's really not that funny."

"Oh, yes it is." He laughed harder. "Mr. 'I can catch a bullet with my bare hands' is hiding in the garage, afraid of a little girl!"

"I'm not afraid of her, Charlie. Her fantasies of me are just... unpleasant." He sighed. "I guess we might as well get this over with."

"Let's just go say hello to the group, and then you can go stay in your office until they're gone," I suggested.

"Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking," Edward agreed. "Would you mind shielding everyone?"

I extended my shield across the house, and found everyone together, sitting in a circle. I decided they must all be in the family room.

"Thanks." Edward visibly relaxed in the mental silence, and took my hand as we went into the house.

We went straight to the family room, and found the group playing Monopoly. I was glad to note that they were using the colorful play money that came with the game; Emmett always insisted on using real money when we played with the Cullens. I hoped we hadn't left any real cash in the box.

"How's the studying going?" I asked, looking at Renesmee.

She laughed. "We finished about an hour ago, but Taylor and Chloe didn't want to go home yet. Chloe's roommate, Brianna, has her boyfriend visiting this weekend, and Chloe promised to give her some time alone with him, so we got a game of Monopoly going. It's still related to economics," she insisted. "Everyone, this is my sister-in-law, Bella, and my brother Edward, and Bella's dad Charlie."

We smiled and waved, and were greeted with a chorus of hellos and nice-to-meet-yous.

"This is Taylor, Megan, Chloe, Matt, and Dylan." Nessie gestured toward each person with her hand as she named them. "There were a few more here, but they left when we finished the actual studying."

"Hi, Edward. Do you remember me from biology lab?" Chloe stood up and came over to talk to us. "I had no idea you were Nessie's brother!"

"Yes, I recognize you," Edward replied, his arm slipping around my waist, pulling me closer to him. "How's it working out with Zach? Was he able to answer the rest of your questions about the lab?"

She nodded. "Your house is just beautiful! Nessie said this is your house?" She was obviously trying to change the subject away from her new lab partner.

"Yes, Bella and I own the house. Jake and Nessie want to get their own place but they're staying with us until they find something they like."

"I don't know why they'd want to move." She looked around the room as if everything visible proved her point. "If I lived here I'd never want to leave!" She giggled. "Would you all like to join us for Monopoly?" Though she invited all of us, she was looking only at Edward.

"I would," I volunteered. "I haven't played that in forever." I smiled at her, knowing she was hating having to smile back at me.

"I have some things to work on in my office," Edward told her. "Maybe another time."

"Dad? You want to play?" I turned to Charlie.

"Um, I think I'll just go up to my room and watch ESPN for a while. You kids have fun."

Edward turned to me and murmured just loud enough for Chloe to overhear, "Don't forget our 'date' tonight." Then he kissed me - it was more passionate than a chaste peck, but did not last long enough to seem horribly inappropriate in front of our small audience. I heard Chloe sigh, but it sounded more wistful than annoyed, and I suspected Edward's little display of affection might be having the opposite of the desired effect.

Edward and Charlie went upstairs, and I sat down by Nessie to join the game. Chloe returned to her spot between Taylor and Matt.

"Bella, you are _so_ lucky." Chloe told me enviously.

"Excuse me?" I knew what she meant, but I was going to make her say it.

"Your husband. He is so gorgeous!" She grinned at me conspiratorially. "He looks like a good kisser too." She raised her eyebrows, obviously hoping I'd dish.

"That he is," I agreed, not adding any more detail.

"Is he good in bed?" She asked, digging for more. This girl had some nerve.

Nessie rescued me. "Chloe, he's my _brother_. I don't want to hear this. Gross! This conversation ends, right now."

Chloe giggled again but let it drop.

We played for a couple hours, and the remainder of the conversation was uneventful. I found myself liking Chloe, once she stopped drilling me on my love life with Edward. I was actually having fun with the group and was losing track of time when I started hearing Charlie's stomach growling upstairs, and I could hear that some of Nessie's friends were getting hungry too. I thought of Edward, alone in his study, and began hoping Nessie's friends would leave soon so he would come down and join us again, but they all seemed to be enjoying the game and the conversation and did not appear to be planning to leave any time soon. I was beginning to wonder if I would need to cook for them.

A few minutes later, Charlie ventured back downstairs. "Hey, Bells, I was thinking of ordering some pizza. Do you have the number for a good pizza place around here?"

"Oh, Dad, I'm sorry! I was going to cook tonight. I should have left this game an hour ago. I was going to make some chili - I can have it ready in less than an hour." I looked around at the Monopoly group. "Will you all be staying to eat with us? I can make a big pot of chili. Does that sound okay?"

"Actually, we should be going," Taylor stood, and pulled Chloe up with her. Chloe shot her a glare, and I heard Taylor whisper in her ear, "Don't be rude. They weren't expecting five extra guests for dinner."

The other three got up as well, saying they couldn't stay. They all gathered their backpacks and jackets, and soon we were alone with just our family again.

"Sorry, Bella, I didn't mean to interrupt your game," Charlie apologized. "Pizza would have been fine, really."

"It's okay, Dad. It's actually good that you interrupted. I know Edward was waiting for them to leave."

"I was considering asking you to go try to break up the party," Edward agreed. "Your stomach has been growling for the last thirty minutes, and I was ready to see my wife again."

I fixed the chili, and after Charlie and Jake ate, we watched a movie, and then Charlie, Jake, and Nessie went to bed. Charlie needed to be at work on Monday, so he was flying out Sunday morning. I hated that he had to spend two days traveling just to spend only one full day with us, but he insisted it was worth it.

Charlie was up at 4am, and after a quick breakfast, I grabbed his luggage and we went into the garage. "Should we take my Ferrari, or would you like a ride in Edward's new car? I promise to keep to the speed limit either way." Edward had suggested I offer him a ride in the Veyron, and I had to admit I wouldn't mind driving it again, even if I had to drive slowly.

Charlie looked over at the Veyron wistfully and shook his head. "We should probably take your car. I wouldn't want to take any chances on his getting dinged in the parking lot."

We got into the Ferrari and I backed out of the garage. "You can go back to sleep if you want, Dad."

"No, I'm not tired. You know I've always been a morning person, Bells."

We drove in comfortable silence for a while.

"Bella, I've always wondered about that scar." Charlie was looking at the scar on my hand which was visible due to the placement of my hands on the steering wheel. "When you... changed... your other scars seem to have disappeared, but that one you got in Phoenix when you fell down the steps in that hotel is still there. Why is that?"

I looked over at Charlie. "That is something we thought you might prefer to keep 'need to know'. The truth about what happened in Phoenix is a bit more gruesome than the public story you were told. Are you sure you want to hear what really happened?"

"I'm sure," he assured me. "I'm through with the lies. What's special about that scar?"

"Well, I guess I can start by explaining the real reason I went back to Phoenix that night. It had nothing to do with you, or with not liking Forks. I still feel really, really bad about what I said to you that night, but I had to leave quickly and that was the only thing I could think of to say for you to let me go."

He nodded. "It's okay, Bella. I realized as soon as you decided to come home that you hadn't meant it, but I've always wondered what your real motivation was for leaving."

"When I went to watch Edward and his family play baseball that night, there was this other sadistic vampire that showed up. James. Edward could tell from his thoughts that he intended to pursue me, and his special vampire skill was tracking people, so we came up with a plan to get me away from him. Alice and Jasper drove me to Phoenix while Edward, Emmett, and Carlisle stayed in Forks to hunt James. Esme and Rose stood guard outside your house to protect you. He -"

"Esme and Rosalie? How would they have protected me? I can't imagine them fighting anyone."

"They can fight when they need to. Esme, especially, hates fighting, but when someone she cares about is in danger, her 'mother bear' instincts come out in full force. I doubt either of them, alone, would have stood a chance against James, but with both of them the odds would have been in their favor."

"They were risking their lives for _me_?"

I nodded. "For both of us. You don't know how scared I was that something might happen to Edward or one of the others..."

"So while I was moping around the house trying to figure out how I hadn't realized you were so unhappy, there were two vampires guarding my house, and you were being driven to Phoenix at a speed several times the legal limit?"

I nodded. "So when I got to Phoenix, James tricked me into meeting him at the ballet studio, the one down from Renée's house."

"The one that burned down." He eyed me suspiciously.

"Yes. James called me from Mom's house and made me think he had her as a hostage, but he was just playing part of an old home video so I would hear her voice. I escaped from Alice and Jasper and went to meet him because I thought if I let him have me, he would leave everyone else alone. So when I got to the ballet studio, he inflicted all those injuries that we told everyone were from falling through the hotel window. His plan was to torture me to death, drain my blood, then show Edward a videotape of it and then kill Edward. It was a game to him - he wanted to pick a fight with Edward, and he considered me to be nothing more than a snack. I don't remember much after he slammed my head into that mirrored wall, but I think I must have instinctively raised my arms when he was going for my neck and he bit my hand instead. That's the scar you're asking about."

I looked over at Charlie. He looked much calmer than I would have expected. He was quiet for a moment as he processed what I had told him and was probably trying to fit it with what he already knew. "So the Cullens rescued you before he took too much blood? I remember Carlisle telling me you had lost a lot of blood..."

"I don't think he got much of my blood, if any. I think Edward pulled him off me as soon as he bit me. Then Edward sucked the venom out - you know, like a rattlesnake bite - because if he hadn't, I would have started turning into a vampire, and Edward wanted me to stay human. My blood loss was from the head wound, and from what Edward took to get the venom out. Dad, what Edward did was amazing - that he was able to stop. I didn't appreciate at the time how much effort it must have taken. Now that I'm a vampire, even though I've only hunted animals, I can't imagine stopping in the middle of a meal. When we're hunting, instinct takes over and it's like all rational thought leaves... It would have been so much harder for him because human blood is much more appealing, and my blood in particular called to him. That he was able to drink enough to get the venom out and then stop - it's just amazing. It shows how much he loved me, even that early in our relationship."

"That was right after your first date." He looked at me questioningly.

"More like our second date. We went out the day before, too, I just never told you about it. I also had talked to him at school a lot, and I ran into him that night I went to Port Angeles with Jessica and Angela and ended up eating with him and he drove me home - that was the night I found out for sure what he was. By the time I introduced him to you, we were already very much in love. I didn't want you and Renée to know how serious we were in the beginning, because I knew you wouldn't understand."

"So what happened to this James? Is he still out there somewhere?"

"No, Emmett and Jasper took care of him."

"What do you mean, they 'took care of him'? They _killed_ him?"

"Yeah, if James picked a fight, it was a fight to the death. He would have pursued us until either he or Edward was dead."

"I always thought his two brothers looked scary. They never got in trouble with the law, but somehow it doesn't surprise me they could kill someone. So has Edward ever...?"

"Killed another vampire? Just one that I'm aware of. James's mate came after me the following summer. You remember the hikers being killed in the woods? That was her, and she was also responsible for all the people who disappeared or were found murdered in Seattle that summer."

"I remember Edward being interested in the news articles about that. So he knew who was causing it all along?"

"Well, it took us a while to piece it together. We knew Victoria was after me, and Edward suspected the murders in Seattle were the work of vampires, but it took us a while to make the connection."

"It seems obvious now that you explain it, but shouldn't it have been obvious to Edward from the beginning, since he knew a vampire was after you?"

"Well, he didn't think it was her because a mature vampire wouldn't leave so much evidence behind. The murders were the work of untrained newborns, and the people who disappeared were the ones who became the newborn vampires. Victoria was building an army to attack the Cullens to avenge the death of her mate, but the Cullens formed an alliance with the wolves, and together they defeated the army while Edward was taking care of Victoria, and Seth took out her sidekick. You remember that motorcycle wreck Jake was in? He was actually crushed by one of the newborns."

Charlie shook his head slowly. "I don't want any more details about the fight. I think that would be more than I need to know." He was quiet for a minute. "What about that hotel in Phoenix? Renée said she saw the broken window you fell through..."

"Alice staged that. The Cullens moved me to the sidewalk in front of the hotel and pretended they found me there."

"But how could she stage something like that?"

"I never asked, but if I had to guess, I'd say she probably let herself fall down the steps and out the window. I remember Edward saying she had almost too much fun staging it." I smiled to myself, imagining how much fun Alice would have had, pretending to be that clumsy.

"You're serious?"

"Yes. She wouldn't have been hurt by the fall or the broken glass, and she could foresee if anyone would witness her fall, so she could time it so that no one would notice."

"You still didn't really answer my question about why that scar is still there. Why didn't it disappear when you changed, like the others? Did it have something to do with it being caused by a vampire?"

"Right. The venom leaves a scar."

We rode in silence for a few minutes.

"There's one more thing I've been wanting to ask you about, but I don't want to upset you." Charlie glanced over at me to gauge my reaction.

"Go ahead," I told him. "I don't think anything you could ask will upset me."

"When Edward left... " He looked over at me to make sure it was okay to continue.

"Go ahead."

"They didn't really move to sunny L.A., did they? What really happened? What was the real reason he left?"

"He left because he thought it was too dangerous for me to be around him. He felt like he was to blame for James and Victoria trying to kill me, just because being with him exposed me to his world." No need to mention Jasper; I didn't want Charlie to hold anything against him. "He thought it would be safer for me if he disappeared from my life. He made me believe he didn't want me anymore, because he wanted me to go on with my life and didn't want me to try to follow him, but he was just as miserable as I was while he was gone."

"Hmpf. I'm not sure that's possible. You don't know how dead you looked during those months."

"Dad..."

"So when you went to help Edward and they all returned? Where did you really go? And why?"

"Alice had a vision of me cliff-diving, and thought I had died. That's why she came to visit - she wanted to check on you and find out what happened. Edward found out about her vision and called your house to find out if it was true, but Jake answered and told him you were 'at the funeral', and Edward assumed it was my funeral rather than Harry's. That was the 'misunderstanding' I told you I had to clear up. Edward had gone to Europe to find someone to help him end his life. I had to go show him I was still alive. I barely made it in time."

"He was trying to get himself killed?"

"He said he decided when he was hunting James that if anything ever happened to me, he wouldn't outlive me by very long."

"I had no idea the boy was suicidal. I guess maybe he _was_ in worse shape than you. Although you did jump off that cliff, and I find it hard to believe you were really doing that for fun. The truth, Bella. Were you trying to kill yourself too?"

"No. I know I had been doing some reckless and dangerous things, like with the motorcycles, but I really wasn't trying to kill myself. I guess you could say I was doing those things to distract myself from the emptiness I felt." I still couldn't bring myself to tell him about the hallucinations - he didn't need to know _why_ dangerous things helped with the emptiness. "But I didn't realize how rough the water was that day - I would have drowned if Jake hadn't saved me, but honestly, I really wasn't trying to kill myself."

Charlie nodded. I could tell he believed me, but he didn't say anything else for a while. I glanced over at him, and he was frowning.

"Dad? What are you thinking? Did I say too much?"

"No. No, I'm glad you told me. It's good to finally know the truth. I was just thinking I didn't do a very good job as a father, keeping my little girl safe. I spent my weekends fishing while my baby was being chased by vampires and gallivanting around the globe."

"You've always been a great dad! There was no way you could have protected me from all of the supernatural dangers I seemed to attract. At the time, it was better that you didn't know everything that was going on. It would have just made you worry, and there wasn't anything you could have done."

"Well, you're still here, and everything turned out okay. If I had somehow managed to protect you from all of this supernatural stuff, you wouldn't be with Edward now, and we wouldn't have Renesmee. I guess I couldn't have done anything to protect you, but I could have been more supportive of your decision to be with Edward. I could have trusted you two more. I'm sorry I grounded you for saving his life - I had no idea. I'm really glad you got to him in time. I didn't trust him much after he left, and for a while there, I hated him for what he did to you - you were so lifeless while he was gone. But I see now that he always had your best interest in mind. He's protected you in ways that I couldn't. I owe him more than I ever realized."

After dropping Charlie off at the airport, I sped home, cutting the two and a half hour trip down to about forty-five minutes.

When I pulled back into the driveway, I could hear Edward and Renesmee talking inside the house, with Pachelbel playing in the background. I went inside and found them in the family room watching Jake and Nessie's wedding video. Nessie was resting her head on Edward's shoulder and I was hit with a twinge of nostalgia. It had been two or three years since I'd seen them sitting together like that - when she and Jake had started developing romantic feelings for each other, she'd had less and less time for her dad and couldn't spend enough time snuggling with Jake. Not that she ignored Edward or neglected him, really, but it had been a while since I had seen the two of them enjoying a sweet father-daughter moment like this, just the two of them.

"Where's Jake?" I asked, sitting down across from them.

"He went into the forest to talk to the pack."

"Did something happen?"

"No, they're still running their routine patrols around La Push and Forks, As far as I know, they haven't encountered anything unusual. They've been meeting like this once a week. The meetings have been getting longer but I think it's just because he misses his friends, and they've been keeping him filled in on how Billy is doing."

The video was getting to the part where Edward escorted her down the aisle and placed her hand in Jake's. We all stopped talking and watched. As he placed her hand in Jake's on the TV screen, she reached up and placed her palm against his cheek and his face broke into a smile. I'd have to ask later what she was showing him.

"You had a beautiful wedding, Sweetheart," I told her when the video ended.

"You grew up much too fast," Edward remarked. turning to look at her. "How does it feel to be a ten-year-old adult?"

"Probably not much different than it feels to be a teenage centenarian," Renesmee laughed.

"Yeah, if she's a child then you're really elderly," Jacob asserted as he came in the door. "Maybe we should put you in a nursing home."

"Right after we put you in a kennel," Edward retorted, grinning.

"Any news?" Nessie asked Jake.

"Dad's doing a lot better. Paul took him fishing yesterday."

"The pack hasn't found anything?" Edward asked.

"No." Jake shook his head. "Some of the guys think we should step down the patrols. I guess it is overkill, since there have been no signs of any visitors, and your family is all on the East Coast now. We're going to keep the current schedule for another week, then gradually reduce the number and frequency of patrols."

Edward nodded. "They can't keep that up indefinitely. They'll still be keeping an eye on Charlie and Sue, though?"

"Yes, of course. We won't stop the patrols completely, we're just gradually shifting back to the schedule they had before we got that wedding gift. Speaking of which, was that our wedding video you were watching?"

"Yes, Dad and I were watching some old home videos," Renesmee answered. "We watched some from when I was younger, then we finished with the one from our wedding."

"Best day of my life." Jake looked at Nessie with a goofy grin. It was easy to see they were so much in love with one another.

"Thanks for letting me borrow my daughter for a while." Edward stood up. "Bella, Alice called while you were gone. She wants us to come over so I can fill her in on more of her human memories. What do you say?"

"Sure, let's go." I suspected Nessie would appreciate having the rest of the day alone with Jake. "Maybe Jasper can help me with my computer assignment while we're there."

"I could help you with that. It's just a C program, right?"

"Yeah, but it will give Jasper and me something to do while you're busy talking to Alice."

"I think we'll stay here," Nessie told us. "We have a lot of homework and things we need to get done before class tomorrow."

Edward retrieved the keys for the Veyron. "You two have fun. We'll be back late tomorrow afternoon, in time for Bella's five o'clock class."

I grabbed my backpack that held my laptop and my notes from class, and soon Edward and I were in the Veyron headed to Cambridge.


	21. Renée's Visit

Chapter 21: Renée's Visit

Rattle-rattle-squeak-THUD. Rattle-rattle-squeak-THUD. Rattle-rattle-squeak-THUD.

Renée sure knew how to pick a shopping cart. She had been unable to pull her first choice loose from the row of carts, and had moved on to the next row and managed to tug this one loose before I could help. We were getting curious glances from the other shoppers, and the loud rhythmic noise was slowly driving me insane. The wheels on the shopping cart were all turning, but there was some sort of gunk stuck on one of them, which was resulting in the thuds.

Renée seemed oblivious to the noise as we headed to the health and beauty aids section of the store. She had forgotten to pack toothbrushes, and her mouthwash had been confiscated by airport security because the container was too large, so she had asked us to stop at a Wal-mart just outside Boston. Edward and Phil had wisely chosen to wait for us out in the car.

After a couple minutes of deliberation, and some suggestions from me, she selected two toothbrushes, and we moved on to the mouthwash, where she made a selection more quickly.

I followed as she pushed the cart with its incessant thuds up another aisle, and was surprised when she stopped in front of the display of condoms.

"Mom?"

"Forgot to pack these too," she mumbled. "I hate buying these. It's so embarrassing when you check out. You don't have any we could borrow, do you? I mean, you wouldn't want them back, but - "

"_Mom!_"

She looked at me innocently.

"You're forty-seven years old. What are the chances you could still get pregnant?"

"The chances are low," she admitted, "but I'm not risking it. I'm too old to start over raising another baby. So, do you...?"

"No, we don't have any, and I'm not asking Jake or Nessie. Just buy what you need." I gestured to the display.

"So if you don't have any, does that mean you guys are finally trying to start a family?" Her eyes lit up. "Any chance I might be a grandma soon?"

It broke my heart that I couldn't tell her she already was. "No, Mom... This isn't really how I planned to tell you this, but - Edward and I can't have kids. I'm really sorry, but we won't be providing you with any grandchildren."

"You _can't_ have kids?" Her surprised expression shifted to one of concern, and she threw her arms around me. "Oh, baby, I didn't know you were struggling with infertility! I have some friends who have been through that and I know it can be really tough." She was mistaking my sadness at not being able to tell her the truth about Renesmee for sadness of not being able to have children...at least I looked appropriately sad. "So what's the problem, exactly?" She released me and stepped back. "Is he shooting blanks?"

I wished I could just disappear. Was I really having this conversation with my mom, in front of a condom display in Wal-mart? "No, it's me, actually, I'm not ovulating." It was a common enough problem, and it was even true. I hoped she would let it go at that.

"There are treatments for that, you know. I have a friend who tried Clomid and she had twins! Have you tried any medications? What does your doctor say?"

"My doctor said he didn't think I could get pregnant. I'd really rather not talk about it right now, if you don't mind."

"What about in vitro?"

I shook my head. "No, we're not going to go to those extremes. We've accepted that it's just the two of us, and we're fine with it. It would be difficult to care for a baby with our line of work, anyway."

"Okay, I'll let it drop for now, but you can talk to me any time. You know that, right?"

"I know. Thanks, Mom."

"So can you help me with this?" Renée gestured to the display. "Phil usually takes care of this. I'm not sure which kind he normally buys. Any suggestions?"

"Don't look at me. I have no experience here. Why don't you call him and ask?" I offered her my cell phone, wondering if Edward would be able to suppress his laughter at the conversation he was about to hear. He was probably already listening to us, so at least he wouldn't be surprised.

"I'll just get this one." She randomly chose a box and added it to our defective shopping cart.

"Is that everything?" I asked hopefully.

"Yeah, I think so. Wait - just let me look down this one aisle..."

By the time we made it to the check-out lane, she had added an exercise DVD, a package of socks, an umbrella, a bag of candy, some windshield wiper fluid, and a roll of duct tape to the cart. She had started to add a couple boxes of ice cream, but I reminded her it would be melted by the time we got home - we still had a two-hour drive ahead of us.

When we got back out to the car, Edward raised his eyebrows knowingly at me, a slight smile on his face.

"You were watching, weren't you?" I asked low enough Renée wouldn't hear. Phil was in the back seat listening to his iPod and opened his eyes only briefly as Mom and I got back into the car.

"Of course. Renée's mind is much more entertaining than watching people walking though the parking lot."

Renée chattered away throughout the rest of our drive home, excitedly telling us all about the latest cakes she decorated, the fun she had traveling with Phil during the season which had just come to a close, and the endless antics of the kindergartners in her current class. Phil eventually tried to join the conversation, but only managed to interject a few comments here and there. Edward and I mostly just listened.

Neither Renée nor Phil seemed to notice that Edward was driving considerably faster than the legal limit. He was not driving nearly as fast as he would have been had they not been in the car with us, but it was enough that they might have expressed alarm if they had been paying enough attention. The extra speed made up for the time lost in the stop at Wal-mart, and we made it home shortly after 6pm.

As we walked in, Renée oohed and aahed over the house, and I explained again the Alice and Esme had decorated it for us.

We led Renée and Phil into the kitchen, where Renesmee was proudly setting food on the table. I had done most of the prep work for the food this morning before leaving for the airport, so she only had to follow simple instructions to finish everything up. She normally regarded cooking with about the same amount of enthusiasm with which she esteemed eating - it was not high on her list of things to do - but she seemed to take pride in presenting the meal for her grandmother. Unfortunately, Edward and I did not have a plausible excuse not to eat, so we joined the others at the table. We managed to smuggle most of our food into our napkins, but were unable to avoid taking a few bites when we noticed Renée or Phil looking at us. Renesmee was able to sneak most of hers onto Jacob's plate, and I envied her that she would only have to endure the food she ate going in one direction, whereas I would get to experience it twice. I tried to recall how pleasant and appetizing the food was to me as a human, but it didn't help at all - the taste, the smell, and the texture were all just as repulsive no matter how hard I tried to focus on my fading memories. I wondered briefly if Eli could make me remember the taste of human food more clearly - would it be more appetizing if my memories were more vivid?

Nessie glanced at me as if there was something she needed to say, but she never spoke up. Her amber eyes startled me a little every time I caught her gaze - she looked so different with those contacts in. I remembered what an annoyance it was to wear contacts - how much they interfered with my vision. At least she didn't have to worry about putting new ones in every few hours, since she had no venom to cause them to disintegrate.

I noticed that Nessie and Jake kept looking at one another, in some sort of silent communication. Something was up, but they obviously didn't want to discuss it at the dinner table, so I didn't say anything about it during the meal.

As we pretended to eat, we conversed with Renée and Phil, slipping in reminders of our cover story with them - Edward was here to attend medical school, having grown bored with work in the computer field, and I was just taking some night classes to fill time - I already had a degree from the University of Alaska and had never started a career other than my government job. Renesmee and Jacob, whom they only met three years ago, were here working on an undergraduate degree, having just finished high school a year ago.

When everyone was finished eating, I began clearing the table, and Nessie and Renée both tried to help. After some coaxing, I persuaded Renée to go on up and get things settled in her room. Jake picked up on the hint and carried Renée's and Phil's luggage upstairs and showed them to their room.

"What's going on?" I asked Renesmee once we were alone. "I saw the looks you and Jake were giving one another - is there something you need to tell us?"

"Where's Dad? I should tell you both together." She continued scraping the remnants of the meal into the trash.

"I'm right here." Edward stepped back into the room. "What's up?" He was as clueless as me, since I had been shielding Jake and Nessie, as usual, since the time we returned home.

"I know this is a bad time, with Grandma Renée here, but I promised to tell you immediately if we received any more communications from the Volturi..."

I felt panic wash through me. Not _now_. Not with Renée and Phil here. What if there were members of the guard already here in Hanover? I hated that Alice couldn't see anything related to my daughter. "What is it?" I demanded. "What did it say?"

"Let's see it," Edward echoed.

"We should probably call the rest of the family and have them meet us later tonight so we can all discuss it - Jake and I don't think there's an immediate threat, at least not this weekend. "

"We'll do that," Edward assured her, "but I want to see what they sent you. Now."

Nessie pulled a folded envelope from the back pocket of her jeans. "We're not quite sure what to make of it. It seems really odd." She pulled the paper from the envelope and handed it to Edward. He held it where I could see as well, and we read it at the same time.

* * *

_Dear Mrs. Black,_

_You are hereby cordially invited to attend the upcoming Antiquities Symposium following the November installment of the Dartmouth Anthropology Lecture Series. Enclosed you will find four tickets for the event - please bring three guests of your choosing. I look forward to meeting you again, Dear One, and it is my hope that we may begin repairing the strained relations between our families. As a show of good faith, I will be accompanied by only Renata and Felix. Please convey my greetings to your parents and to my dear friend Carlisle._

_Kindest Regards,_

_A.R.O._

* * *

Enclosed, along with the four tickets, were a copy of the flyer Renesmee had seen around campus announcing the lecture series, and a second flyer advertising the symposium. From the information on the second flyer, I gathered that symposium was to be a fundraiser which aimed to raise funds for the anthropology department of the university, and it appeared it would feature food, music, dancing, and an opportunity to ask questions of that night's lecturers.

"Aro's coming for a campus fundraiser?" I was beyond confused. That was the last thing I would have expected to find in a communication from the Volturi.

"I should have seen this coming!" Edward berated himself. "Dr. Antonio R. Ogianesi. A.R.O. Aro! How did I not see this earlier? Carlisle even told me that Ogianesi isn't a real Italian surname - he'd never heard of it before. It's contrived. He apparently took a surname and added or dropped a letter to make the initials fit."

"But why would he come to a fundraiser? Why is he pretending to work for a museum? That's not Aro. He doesn't mingle with humans like that." It still didn't make any sense to me. "And why would he even bother to come up with a name like that?"

"I don't know." Edward pinched the bridge of his nose. "He's got something up his sleeve. We need to talk to the others. We'll tell Renée we have a meeting with some other agents and will be away overnight."

"What do we tell Phil?" I asked. He didn't know about the secret agent story - he just thought we had a lot of plastic surgery and that our whole family was kind of odd.

Mom returned to the kitchen before either of them could respond.

"Where's Phil?" I asked, when I realized he wasn't following behind her.

"He's upstairs. He wanted to lie down for a while. I think he just ate too much. Nessie, you're a great cook! I'm going to have to get your recipe for that broccoli casserole. Bella, do you remember the time I tried to make a broccoli casserole and we ended up feeding it to the neighbor's dog?" Renée laughed.

I didn't remember, but I laughed with her as if I did. "Yeah, Mom, that was pretty bad. I'll make sure we get you the recipe, this one is really pretty simple."

"Renée, we had something unexpected come up," Edward began, "and we're going to need your help covering with Phil. We need to meet with some other agents tonight to plan our next covert operation, and we may be gone most of the night. Can you cover for us with Phil if he notices we're gone?"

"Sure. Of course." Renée's eyes were wide. "I'll be glad to help. What do I tell him?"

"We'll be leaving around 10pm tonight. If he's awake when we leave, we'll tell him we need to make an appearance at a social function for school. If we're not back when he wakes up in the morning, just act like you don't know where we are, and we'll come up with something when we get back."

"Okay, I can do that." She seemed excited to be helping our "mission" in this small way.

Edward excused himself to his office to call Carlisle, while Renée, Nessie, and I finished cleaning up the kitchen.

We then all met back in the family room, except for Phil, who was still resting upstairs in the guest room.

"What are all those clothes in the guest room closet?" Renée asked. "Has someone been staying here with you?"

"Oh, those are Eli's," I told her. "He hasn't been staying here; he's just using our closet for storage. He's another agent who's been working with us lately. He's also in my chemistry class at Dartmouth." I turned to Edward. "Did you tell him about our meeting tonight?"

"I just sent him a text. He'll meet us there." Edward slipped his phone back into his pocket.

It was going to be hard to sit here making small talk with Renée for the next couple hours. My mind kept reviewing the wording of the invitation and trying to decipher what Aro might be up to...if it was even really from Aro. It just didn't seem like something he would do.

"Bella, you know how you asked me to bring all the pictures from when you were growing up? I brought the all the ones I could find. I never even realized I took so many pictures!" Renée laughed. "Anyway, Jake put them in your office. You're planning to make copies, right?"

I forced myself to focus on what she was saying so I could make an appropriate response. "Yes, I'll scan the ones we want copies of and I'll get all the originals back to you. Did you bring the home videos too?"

"Yeah, we didn't have as many of those. I think they're still in my suitcase but I'll be sure to leave them for you. I was actually thinking we might could all watch them together. Wouldn't that be fun?"

"I love old videos!" Renesmee exclaimed. "So these are when Bella was a little girl?"

Renée nodded. "Mostly birthdays and Christmases, but there were a few other occasions I got the camera out. I wish I had done it more." She turned to me and smiled. "You grew up so fast. It's like I blinked and you were getting married."

I knew exactly how she felt, but I couldn't say so. "Maybe we could watch them tomorrow," I told her . I had the feeling I should be embarrassed about letting everyone see these, but I honestly couldn't remember what was in the videos and was genuinely interested in seeing them. I knew there would be the one James used to lure me to the ballet studio, which might bring up some unpleasant memories for Edward as well as for me, but it should mostly be birthdays and Christmases, like Renée said. Those shouldn't be too embarrassing, right? I wondered if she had any video of when I used to take ballet lessons. I didn't ask, since it was something I should probably already know the answer to. I would just wait and watch with everyone else.

Jacob stood up. "Ness and I are going to go check out the meeting site, and, um, survey the surrounding area."

"Call me immediately if you find anything," Edward instructed him.

"I thought you weren't part of the government program." Renée looked at Jake, confused.

"I'm not. I'm, um..." He looked over at Edward for help digging himself out of his mistake.

"He's in a different sort of program," Edward explained. "We don't normally work together except under special circumstances." True enough, the wolf program didn't historically cooperate with the vampire program - it had indeed been special circumstances that drew them together.

"Yeah, and that's more than I was supposed to reveal," Jake added, looking uncomfortable.

"My lips are sealed." Renée smiled, happy to be in on a slightly more of the family secret.

Jake and Nessie left, and Renée started talking some more about Phil's last season, but I only heard about half of what she said because I kept thinking the letter from Aro and wondering if Jake and Nessie would find anything - would they find the trail of any "visitors" in the woods behind our house? Were they safe? Maybe we shouldn't have let them go alone...

"How many more years do you think he'll play?" Edward asked at the end of one of Renée's stories. "He's forty-one now, right?"

"Yes, he's forty-one." Renée seemed a bit sad. "I think this was his last year - he passed his peak a few years ago and it looks like he's retiring now."

"What are you going to do?" I asked. She had nearly my full attention now. I knew they depended on his small income to supplement her teacher's salary. Would they still be able to afford their house payments? They just bought a new house five years ago - would they be able to keep it?

"Well, honey, we'll manage. You and I lived on my income for years before Phil came along. We'll just have to do without some of the extras we've gotten used to."

"But when it was just you and me, Dad was sending child support. And you guys just bought a new house! Are you going to be able to make the payments?"

"We'll manage. You don't need to worry about us. Something will work out." Renée smiled, trying to reassure me, and probably herself as well. "I think we'll be able to keep the house, but worst case, Phil's parents said we could move in with them if we need to. They moved to St. Augustine a couple years ago, so I'd still be able to drive to work." Her voice changed to a whisper. "I hope we don't have to move in with them though - I'm not sure I could take seeing that woman every single day." She rolled her eyes.

"Mom, if you need anything - financially - you know you can come to us. We get paid ridiculously well, and we're able to help with whatever you need."

"That's sweet of you, honey, but you know we could never accept your money. We'll be fine. I was dreading telling you because I knew you'd worry like this."

"Just remember we're here if you need us," Edward told her.

Renée smiled and nodded. "I appreciate your concern, both of you, but it won't be necessary. Oh, and I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't mention anything to Phil about his retirement - he's not really very happy about it. I think the word 'retirement' makes him feel old, and he's really going to miss playing."

"Understood," Edward assured her.

"I won't say anything," I agreed.

She asked about school, and we told her a little about our classes. She was impressed that Edward was in medical school, and she laughed with me about me taking a computer class.

Around nine o'clock, Phil ambled down the stairs and sat down by Renée, putting his arm around her.

"Sorry I disappeared for a while there," he apologized. "I thought I'd lie down for a few minutes after I unpacked, and I ended up falling asleep."

"That's okay," I assured him. "Are you feeling better now?"

"Yes, much better now, thanks."

Edward turned on the TV and flipped through channels until he found a football game. "Do you follow college football, Phil?"

"Yeah," he smiled. "I was just thinking of asking if you'd mind checking the score on that game." He continued staring at the television, and I doubted he was going to be participating in any further conversation tonight.

Edward pretended to be absorbed in the game as well. He was actually watching it, but, unlike Phil, his mind had the capability to focus on more than one thing at a time, so I knew he was still listening to Renée and me as well - he was just giving her the illusion of some mother-daughter time.

Renée slipped away from Phil and moved over to sit down by me instead. Edward, who was on the other side of me, leaned forward as if he were intent on what was happening in the game.

Renée took this as an opportunity to ask about my "fertility problems" again. She wanted to know how long we had been trying, what medications we had tried, how long I'd been charting, if I'd done any research online, how many doctors I had seen, if Edward had been tested too - her questions were endless. I had no idea she was so well versed in the field of infertility. Suddenly I wondered if she and Phil had tried to have kids - maybe she was speaking from personal experience?

"Mom?" I interrupted her.

"What, baby?"

"You seem know an awful lot about this. Did you have fertility problems too? Is that why you and Phil never had kids? You were only thirty-four when you married him..."

Renée looked sad. "We tried for about three years when we first married, but I decided I was getting too old - pregnancies after age thirty-five are considered higher-risk... and then you got married and I kind of assumed I might be having grandchildren soon..." She looked at me guiltily.

"I'm sorry, Mom." I wished I could just tell her. She _was_ a grandmother. She had the smartest, most wonderful, most beautiful granddaughter in the world - but there was no way I could explain that Edward's little sister who looked eighteen was really our daughter, and there was no way I was telling her what we really were. Especially now - I couldn't give the Volturi any additional excuses to exterminate us, especially any that would involve Renée. Aro was apparently visiting us soon, and if he managed to take Edward's thoughts again... No, Renée couldn't know the truth. It was much safer for her to remain in blissful ignorance. I was glad she lived a good physical distance from us as well - she would be nowhere near us when Aro comes to town next month.

Renée picked up on my sadness again and pulled me into a hug. I felt Edward's hand gently rubbing my back in a comforting gesture, though he continued to pretend his entire focus was on the game. Phil seemed oblivious to our little mother-daughter moment.

"I'm sorry I didn't realize you were going through that, Mom. How come you never talked to me about it?"

"You were a teenager, Bella, and I didn't want to burden you with my problems."

"So why were you so concerned with getting protection yesterday, if you can't get pregnant?"

"Do you know how many of my friends got pregnant after they stopped trying? I had two different friends who had twins through in vitro, and then got pregnant again without trying when their twins were still babies. And there were some more who got pregnant after they gave up and stopped fertility treatments. I wouldn't want to get pregnant now - like I said, I'm too old to start over, and there's a greater risk of birth defects." She pulled back from me and smiled. "You're only twenty-eight. You never know, it might still happen for you. Don't give up hope, sweetheart."

I shook my head but forced a smile. "Thanks, Mom." I looked up at the clock. "We're going to have to go to our meeting soon. If Phil asks about Jake and Nessie, they went to bed early," I added in a whisper.

"Okay," Renée nodded.

Phil, who had been on the edge of his seat, stretched a bit and relaxed back onto the sofa. I noticed a commercial had come on.

Edward stood up and stretched as well. "I hate to be rude and leave you two here," Edward said, looking at Phil, "but Bella and I have a social obligation with the university. One of my professors is hosting this thing and we need to go make an appearance. Jake and Nessie went to bed early. You probably won't see them before tomorrow unless Jake comes down to raid the refrigerator."

"Oh, no problem," Phil replied. "I just want to catch the end of the game and then we'll be going to bed anyway. You guys have fun."

"Can I get you anything before we go? Something to drink? A snack? Maybe some popcorn?" Edward was so considerate. I should have thought of asking them that, but human food was the last thing on my mind at the moment. I was fairly certain his mind had been elsewhere as well, but he had probably heard something in their thoughts.

"Popcorn would be great," Phil answered.

"I am kind of thirsty," Renée answered. "But I can get it. You two go on."

I followed Renée into the kitchen and got down some glasses for her and found the box of microwave popcorn.

"I can take it from here. Go to your meeting." She shooed us away.

We grabbed our jackets and went out through the garage. Edward opened the passenger door of my car and I got in.

I wondered what Carlisle and Jasper and the others would have to say about the bizarre Volturi letter.

* * *

**A/N: Did anyone pick up on Antonio R. Ogianesi's initials back in chapter 15? I was expecting questions/comments on that when I posted that chapter but no one has mentioned it at all. Was the clue more subtle than I thought, or did anyone notice and just not bother to comment?**


	22. Strategy Session

CHAPTER 22: Strategy Session

"Where are we going, exactly?" I asked Edward once he had settled into the driver's seat.

"I'm going to leave the car on a side road, out of sight, and we'll run to the meeting. It's at a clearing in the woods behind our house but we needed to take the car because Phil would think it would be pretty odd for us to walk to a campus function from here."

"Oh, right, that would be pretty odd. Although I think he realizes odd is normal for us. So... this isn't _our_ clearing, is it?"

"No," Edward's face broke into a smile. "You know I wouldn't call a family meeting in our clearing. There's another clearing a couple miles from there. It's actually a little larger than the one we've been frequenting." I wondered briefly why I hadn't known about this larger clearing, but I really hadn't explored the woods behind our house much.

He pulled off the road onto what appeared to be an unused dirt road and parked the car so that it wouldn't be visible from the main road.

We got out of the car and ran, quickly reaching the clearing. Everyone was already there - Carlisle, Esme, Jasper, Alice, Emmett, and Rosalie, were all waiting for us, along with Jake and Nessie, and Eli.

"Have you been filled in?" Edward asked Eli.

"Not exactly - I just got here," he responded. "I gather you received a confusing letter from Aro of the Volturi and that he's coming to visit, but I haven't been filled in on the details. Something about a symposium on campus? It's not making any sense."

"No," Edward agreed, "it doesn't make much sense. I invited you here because if Aro touches me and learns of you, he will covet your gift as he does mine, so I think you deserve to know what's going on. I want to warn you, though, before you get any more involved - if you stay for this meeting tonight, and Aro manages to touch me again, he will know you have sided with us and may consider you an enemy of the Volturi. We don't intend to provoke them, but you know we will defend ourselves against them if they attack. If you don't want to take sides, now is the time to leave."

"Have I given you any reason to think I wouldn't stand with you against them?" Eli seemed offended.

"No, of course not, but leaving would be the safest course of action for you right now. I just want to make sure you understand that if you stay for the rest of this discussion, you're involved. I'm hearing everything you're thinking, and if Aro touches me again, he will have heard it too. He'll know for certain exactly where your loyalties lie."

"I'm staying." Eli didn't hesitate in his answer. I knew he was a good friend - but to hear that he was willing to risk his life defending us...it was more than we had any right to expect of anyone.

Edward gave a single nod in acknowledgment.

Carlisle spoke up. "Thank you for joining us, Eli. I'll read the letter again for your benefit." He proceeded to read the letter aloud.

"Do we know this is really from Aro?" I asked when Carlisle reached the end of the letter. Everyone turned to look at me. "It just doesn't seem like him. Giving a lecture at a college campus?"

"I could smell his scent on the paper," Edward answered me, and Alice nodded in agreement. I hadn't been close enough to Aro, after becoming a vampire, to distinguish his scent from that of those around him, but Edward had - twice, and Alice had as well. "I believe he wrote it with his own hand," Edward added.

"Yes, I recognize the handwriting," confirmed Carlisle. "And I agree, it's definitely his scent. Bella is correct, of course, that it's very odd for him to plan to mingle with humans in this way. I'd say he _is_ the foremost authority on antiquities in existence, so he might have some passing interest in these lectures, but I think it's fairly obvious that we're his real reason for coming. He must have devised this scenario in order to meet with us in what he thinks we would perceive to be a nonthreatening environment. He would never attack us with a large human audience present, and especially not if he's accompanied by only two members of his guard."

"Do you really think he'll bring only those two?" Eli asked. "And even if he only has two guard members with him at the fundraiser, don't you think he'll have others waiting nearby? They could be planning to ambush us after the event."

"If he truly is trying to repair relations with us, as he said, then yes, I think he might show up with only two others." Carlisle seemed thoughtful. "He knows our minds as well as we each know our own. He knows how much I abhor violence, and he knows how much restraint we demonstrated the last time we met. I think he would be confident we wouldn't attack him without further provocation."

Edward agreed. "Carlisle is right - he is arrogant enough to think Renata and Felix could protect him from anything short of a full-scale war, and if he's not planning to launch an attack, he might travel here with just the two of them. That doesn't necessarily mean that he will though. He could just as easily be trying to fool us into thinking this is a friendly visit when it may actually be a distraction from the offensive action he is planning."

"He could be trying to split us up," Jasper suggested. "He could be sending the rest of the guard after those of us who don't attend the event. If Bella is at the symposium, the rest of us would be defenseless against Alec."

"As of today, I don't think they have any plans to attack," Alice said. "I can't see the meeting, but I've looked for our family the day after the meeting and we're all involved in normal activities." She furrowed her brow. "But he knows how my ability works, so he may be waiting until the last minute to decide exactly what he's going to do."

"That has to be why he sent the invitation to me instead of Dad or Grandpa," Nessie added. "He knows you can't see me. And that's why he wants me at the meeting. As long as I'm going to be there, you won't be able to see the outcome."

I knew that had to be the main reason - or at least one of the main reasons - that Aro seemed to have chosen my daughter as his primary point of contact with the family. However, I worried it wasn't the only reason. His inordinate level of interest in her was disturbing. I recalled how fascinated he had been to learn about the existence of hybrids. But if that were his focus, there were other hybrids he could have studied more easily - some of Nahuel's sisters might have even visited Volterra willingly if Joham hadn't been executed. Not that Joham hadn't deserved his fate. But Aro seemed interested in Renesmee, specifically. Probably simply because Edward and I were her parents. But was that interest purely academic? Or was he hoping to use her as a pawn somehow to get to Edward or Alice or me?

"Why would we believe him that he wants to repair relations with us?" Rosalie asked, pulling me from my brief but confusing train of thought. "If he's afraid of us, he should just leave us alone. Aro's seen enough from our minds that he should know by now we'd never attack them unprovoked."

"They do feel threatened by us, but mostly they covet our talents," Edward reminded her. "This is more likely part of some ploy to try to persuade some of us to join them."

"Well, he's also seen enough of our thoughts that he should know that none of us would ever willingly join them," Rosalie responded. "Why would he even bother to communicate with us?"

"That's a good question," Carlisle acknowledged. "I think they must realize by now that they can't coerce or threaten any of us into joining, and Chelsea's power isn't strong enough to break our family's bonds with one another. But if their goal is to have some of us join them, it would make sense for them to try to get on our good side. They may be hoping that given enough time, and with enough show of good will, they might be able to eventually gain our trust. That would obviously be very difficult for them to do, but time means little to them, and they can be very persistent when they have a goal."

"It does make sense strategically that they'd want to repair relations with us," Jasper concurred. "We're the only group large enough and talented enough to pose any real threat to them. Like Carlisle said earlier when Jacob and Renesmee received the wedding gift, the Volturi are smart enough to know they'd be better off having us as friends and allies than as enemies. Getting Edward, Alice, and Bella to join them are more likely longer-term goals."

"Well, I'll never join them," Alice asserted. "None of us will. And I don't need to be a psychic to know that."

"What's the deal with that name?" Jacob asked. "Antonio R. Ogianesi. Was there a real person named that? Did he kill a museum director so he could assume the identity? Is that museum he's supposed to be from really even a real museum?"

"It is a real museum," Carlisle answered. "I've visited it a number of times. I checked its website this evening, and they do apparently have a Director of Antiquities by that name. There's a short bio and it says he's held the position for nearly three years. The previous director died about two months prior to that, apparently of natural causes. I searched some Italian newspapers online, but I couldn't find anything about the new director other than an announcement when he accepted the position, and a press release about his participation in the upcoming lecture series at Dartmouth. The same picture is shown with both online articles - he's standing outside wearing sunglasses and seems to be waving at someone. The pictures are small, and low resolution, and I've never seen Aro in modern attire, so I can't be sure, but it does look like it could be him. It seems he may have spent the last three years as an employee of this museum. He's certainly qualified for the position, but it's difficult to imagine him willingly working alongside humans that way. Perhaps it's more of a consulting position - he may be performing most of his job responsibilities remotely from Volterra."

"The website could have been hacked and the news stories could have been planted," Jasper asserted. "This is what Aro wanted us to find, and he would need to appear to be a real employee of the museum in order for the university to accept him as a guest speaker."

"That's true," Carlisle conceded. "I'm not sure knowledgeable the Volturi are with current human technology, though."

"But what about the name he chose?" Jacob persisted. "Is it just me, or does the second half of his last name sound like a reference to my wife?"

The idea startled me. Ogia_nesi_. Nessie. They sounded the same. Was it some sort of message? And the first name... "What about Antonio?" I asked. "That could be a reference to Edward's middle name."

"But why?" Edward asked. "What purpose would it serve for him to assume part of my name?"

"Maybe it's a hidden message," Emmett suggested. "Like 'Prepare to be assimilated.'" Where had I heard that expression before? A movie, maybe, when I was human?

"Well, they're not the Borg," Rosalie seethed.

"And resistance is not futile," Jasper added. "I think we proved that the last time they were here."

"Enough with the Star Trek references," Edward complained, rolling his eyes. "This is serious!"

"I know it's serious," Rosalie snapped. "But Emmett's point is valid. They want your talent. They want you to join them. That could be the meaning behind the name he chose."

"I'm sorry, Rose." Edward's expression softened. "They're not going to get any of us. We'll get through this." He was apparently responding to the thoughts behind her words.

Rosalie nodded and Emmett pulled her closer to him.

"Any ideas on the rest of the name?" Jacob asked. "O-g-i-a? I googled it and didn't come up with anything that made sense. Oklahoma Gang Investigators Association, Oil and Gas Independents' Association, Ohio Government In Action, an insurance company... I couldn't find anything that would mean anything to us."

"Ogianesi isn't a real surname," Carlisle responded. "I think he just added an "O" in front of the surname Gianesi so that the initials would spell 'Aro'. Or he could have dropped the "M" from "Mogianesi." Neither of those surnames have any significance to me, though, and I'm not aware of any significance they would have to the Volturi. They apparently wanted something that was unique but didn't sound too unusual. I don't think there's a secret code in the name, though - that's not how Aro works. He may have chosen the name due to the audible similarity to "Nessie", but I wouldn't try to read into it too deeply. I think we need to focus our attention on how we can prepare for the meeting. We need to decide which of us will accompany Renesmee to the symposium, and we need to plan exactly where everyone else will be during this meeting."

"I'm going with her," I stated unequivocally.

"So am I," Edward declared.

"And she's not facing him without me," Jacob insisted.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea, Jacob." Edward told him. "You'd have to go in human form, and it would be disastrous if you phased in front of all the human attendees."

"I can control myself," Jacob insisted. "You know I can. I can keep my temper under control. I wouldn't phase in front of an audience."

"You'd be useless against them in a fight without phasing," Edward argued.

"You can't fight them there either," Jacob countered. "And Carlisle just said Aro wouldn't attack us with a human audience."

"Still, there's no risk of me morphing into a giant wolf. And while we can be fairly confident Aro won't pick a real fight in that setting, there are things that could be done somewhat inconspicuously." Edward said pointedly.

The color drained from Renesmee's face. "Jake, if one of them bit you... or injected venom..." According to his tribe's legends, our venom is fatal to the Quileutes - and Aro knows this.

"I'm not afraid of them," Jacob insisted, turning to Renesmee. "I want to be there for you. You can't go meet those leeches without me there with you."

"Jake, please..." she beseeched him, cupping his face in her hands.

Whatever she was showing him seemed to be having some influence. Jake closed his eyes and trembled slightly, whether due to anger or some other emotion I wasn't sure, but he seemed to be fighting to keep himself under control. "Okay," he relented. "I won't go inside the building during the event, but I'll be nearby. I know Edward and Bella and whoever else goes can protect you against those three. I can patrol the area outside for any other unwanted visitors."

"Thank you," Nessie smiled, and keeping her hands in the same position on his face, she pulled his face down slightly and stood on her tiptoes to give him a kiss. They were so sweet together. I rarely saw them showing this much affection since they tried to keep it toned down around us because of Edward. I glanced over at Edward, remembering I wasn't shielding anyone right now, knowing he'd want to know what everyone was thinking during the strategy session. He seemed fine, though.

"Carlisle? Would you like to use the fourth ticket?" Edward asked. "You're our leader, and your familiarity and experience with the Volturi would be valuable, and your calm demeanor is, of course, always an asset when dealing with them."

"Yes, of course. I'll go with you," Carlisle agreed. "I suspect we're the four he's wanting to see, anyway - we are the ones he specifically mentioned at the end of the letter."

"Do we want to play right into his hand?" Eli asked. "Do we want to have exactly the four he wants to be the ones to go meet him? Maybe we should mix it up a bit, catch him off guard by sending the ones he has less interest in. Jasper, Emmett, and I could go with her. The three of us could certainly protect her if it came down to a physical fight."

"We can't get past Renata without Bella," Jasper argued. "She's a physical shield."

"You will do no such thing, young lady." Edward was looking at Nessie sternly.

"It was just a thought," Nessie answered. "I could try showing her something, though. That might answer the question."

"That's not a bad idea," Eli agreed.

"Would one of you like to fill in the rest of us?" I asked. These mental conversations really got on my nerves sometimes.

Renesmee was looking at her dad, seeming unsure as to whether he would approve of her voicing the thought aloud, and Edward was just standing there pinching the bridge of his nose.

Eli jumped in and offered the explanation. "She was thinking she can get through your shield, Bella, to show you her thoughts. She was wondering if she could get through Renata's shield the same way. If she can get through the shield to touch her face, she could also get through it to physically attack her. The element of surprise might be enough to get her away from Aro."

"It won't be necessary to find out," I argued. "I'll be there, and I can take care of Renata if it becomes necessary."

"You've never tested your shield against hers, have you?" Eli asked. "I don't think we know for sure how hers works. What if her gift is more like Jasper's or Alice's and she doesn't need to touch your mind for it to be effective?"

"He makes a good point," Jasper stated. "I don't think this meeting will turn into a physical fight, based on what we know so far, so I'm certainly not suggesting that Nessie attack Renata, Edward. But if she could try to touch her, under the guise of showing her something, we could gain some important tactical information. It would be good to know, in case we're forced to fight them at some point in the future."

"I understand your logic, Jasper, but I still don't like it." Edward replied. "Whether or not she could get through Renata's shield, Aro might view the attempt as preparation for an attack, and things could get out of control quickly."

"She could ask permission first," Jasper argued. "Aro has experienced Nessie's gift and knows it's harmless. He might not object to her showing Renata something - in fact, he would probably be even more curious than we are as to whether she can get through Renata's shield - you know how he liked to experiment with Bella's ability. And if Nessie's successful, Aro might be a little less likely to risk an attack against us. He probably already suspects that Renata's gift wouldn't be effective against Bella, which is why he's bringing Felix as his other bodyguard. "

"I don't think we should come right out and ask, because Aro would see we were looking for ways through his defenses - he could interpret it as part of a plot to attack him in the future," Edward replied. "It would have to be Aro's idea, and I don't think he's going to suggest it."

"Maybe we could plant the question in his mind and arouse his curiosity," Renesmee proposed. "I could touch Mom's face and show her something so he can see I can get through her shield - he doesn't know she can lower it, right? So if he sees I can get through a mental shield, he might be curious enough to ask us to test whether I could get through a physical shield. We think her ability is mentally based, like Mom's, but one repels mental intrusions whereas the other repels physical intrusions. Dad, you said once you thought my ability was the reverse of Mom's - she lets no one in, and I can't be kept out. So maybe Renata wouldn't be able to keep me out."'

"He already knows you can get through your mother's shield, because he's already taken those memories from me." Edward spoke slowly, thinking through his response. "He didn't focus on that piece of information at the time - you were a baby then, and even if you could have gotten through Renata's shield, you wouldn't have been much of a threat. In this setting, with him seeing with his own eyes that you can go through your mother's shield, and with only Renata and Felix there to protect him, it probably would trigger his curiosity about your effectiveness against Renata, but I don't think he would be careless enough to offer to let you test the theory. If you were successful, it would have revealed an advantage we might have against them, and if you're not, there's no advantage that Aro would gain...it would just be the status quo."

"But it wouldn't hurt for me to demonstrate going through Mom's shield, right? Just on the off chance his curiosity gets the best of him?"

"Sure, you can do that if you want," Edward reluctantly agreed, "as long as you don't make any overt suggestions about Renata."

"Now that that's settled, let's talk about what the rest of us are going to do during this meeting," Jasper suggested. "Jake, you mentioned patrolling the area outside the building. I think that's perfect, and I think the rest of us should join you. We should all stay out of the building, and maintain a respectful distance from Aro and his two guards, but we should stay close enough that we could mentally call out a warning to Edward if necessary."

"So we should stay within about three miles of the building?" Jake asked.

"One to two would be better," Edward suggested. "I would probably hear you at three, but I would need to be concentrating on you, and my focus will be on Aro, Renata, and Felix. Your mental voices will be louder if you're closer to me."

"Besides, I'd like all of you to be close enough that I could reach you quickly if you need to be shielded." I added.

"We should stick close together, too," Jasper advised, "so that none of us gets isolated. We don't want anyone getting trapped and outnumbered. Eli, what's your range? Would you be able to monitor the meeting by scanning Edward's mind while you're outside with us?"

"My range isn't as good as Edward's. I'd have to be right outside the building - I wouldn't be able to go far at all. Two miles would definitely be out of range."

"We should probably break into two groups, then. Alice, Esme, and I will go with Jacob to patrol the area, and Eli, Emmett, and Rosalie can stay outside the building. Eli, you can text me if you hear anything of immediate concern during the meeting."

Jasper's plan made sense, and there were no objections. Eli shouldn't be left alone, and Emmett and Rosalie would want to be together. Jasper would want Alice with him - she would just need to maintain a little physical distance from Jacob if they met any Volturi guard members who wanted to fight. That worked when they fought the newborns - she had kept some physical distance from the wolves during the fight and their presence during the battle hadn't interfered with her ability to "see" the newborns she fought. Esme would go with Jasper's group, as the ones patrolling the area would be more likely to encounter trouble and should be the larger group. We wouldn't want too many hanging around the building anyway, because that group needed to remain undetected - we wouldn't want Aro to think we were ignoring his request to have only four of us meet him.

The group discussion continued a while longer. There was more speculation on why he seemed eager to talk to Renesmee specifically - was he just sending the invitations through her to circumvent Alice's vision, or did he actually wish to discuss something specific with Renesmee? Why did he not specify who else she should bring? Did he assume she would select the ones he wanted, or did he really not care who accompanied her? Why is Aro going to the trouble to actually give a lecture to humans at Dartmouth and mingle with them at a party afterward? Surely there were other public places we could have met - a football game or some other event where Aro could be an inconspicuous spectator or audience member rather than a guest speaker in the spotlight. Would he wear the sunglasses the whole time, indoors in November? Or would he wear contacts to disguise his eye color? What would Caius and Marcus be up to while Aro is here? Did they really want to repair relations with us, even if there was an ulterior motive? Or was that just a guise to get us to meet with him so they could catch us off guard when they attacked? There were so many "what ifs", and Jasper systematically led us through discussion of every conceivable contingency.

When the conversation finally began to die down, Emmett suggested we practice fighting - he was interested to see what Eli could do, since he and Rosalie were going to be outside with him during the meeting with Aro.

"You're worried you'll need to protect me?" Eli laughed at the notion. He stepped toward the center of the field. "Bring it on," he challenged, looking Emmett in the eye.

A sly grin spread across Emmett's face, and he launched himself at Eli from where he stood about fifteen feet away. Eli moved as Emmett's feet left the ground and was standing where Emmett had been by the time Emmett landed. I thought Emmett was going to land flat on his face but he righted himself just in time and landed in a crouch. Emmett emitted a low growl and they began circling one another. They gradually closed the distance between them, and Eli knocked Emmett to the ground. Emmett rolled them over so that Eli was pinned beneath him. As Emmett lunged for his neck, Eli twisted his upper body to the side, and Emmett's face made contact with the rocky ground. Chunks of dirt and rock went flying as they were dislodged from the impact, and then Eli was leaning over Emmett, his teeth mere millimeters from his neck. The entire fight had lasted about twenty seconds, and most of that was taken up by the time they spent circling one another.

"Rematch!" Emmett declared. "I won't be holding back this time," he warned. "Nice to meet you, by the way. I'm Emmett."

"I know," Eli laughed. "Nice to meet you too. I'm Eli, but you already know that. I've seen so much of your family in Edward's thoughts, I feel like I know you already." He went over and shook hands with Rosalie as well, introducing himself, and whispering, "Don't worry, I'll try not to go too hard on him." Rosalie quirked an eyebrow as Eli headed back over to Emmett for their next round.

I noticed some of the others moving off to the side to practice with one other. Carlisle was practicing with Jasper, and Esme was demonstrating some fighting techniques for Nessie. It seemed odd to see Carlisle and Jasper fighting, and even odder to see Esme teaching combat skills to her granddaughter. I hated that it was necessary, but Esme was a gentle and effective teacher. I knew Jasper had been giving Nessie occasional lessons for years, but Edward and I preferred not to watch. It was too hard seeing our daughter in that situation - it always made the Volturi threat seem more real.

Emmett and Eli went at it three more times, but Eli defeated him easily each time. None of their fights lasted more than a minute.

"One more time, and then I want to see you against Jasper or Edward," Emmett told Eli.

I leaned over to Edward so I could whisper in his ear. "How is he defeating Emmett so quickly?" Edward's fights with Emmett always last longer than that, and Edward was an excellent fighter and possessed the same mindreading advantages as Eli. Was Eli really that good? I hadn't noticed any unusual moves that Edward hadn't used in the past.

"Don't tell Emmett," Edward whispered back, "but I always play with him for a while before getting serious. Eli was out to win from the beginning. He is quite good though - he knows how to turn Emmett's strength against him."

Jasper and Carlisle had called their own match a draw, after only a few minutes of fighting. They seemed more interested in watching Eli's quick and decisive wins over Emmett.

Edward was still standing with me, watching Emmett and Eli intently. They had begun circling one another again. I wished Edward would practice with me, but I knew his feelings on the matter had not changed since the first time I'd brought it up, and I did understand that it was emotionally difficult for him to view me as an opponent, so I did not press him on it. He had also never liked watching when one of the others gave me lessons, just as I didn't like watching Renesmee's lessons, so tonight I chose not to actively participate - but I could still watch and learn from observation.

I noticed Edward glancing over at Rosalie. He nodded slightly and I suspected from the humor in his eyes that he was encouraging her to do whatever she had been thinking.

I watched as Rosalie jumped into the fight, making her approach when neither Eli nor Emmett was looking her direction, grabbing Eli by one arm and one leg and throwing him to the edge of the clearing. Carlisle, Esme, and Alice leaped to the side just in time to avoid a collision, and Eli landed near the tree line with a loud crash as his body slammed into the ground. He was back on his feet instantly and returned to face the two of them, a huge smile on his face, eagerly accepting the challenge of two-on-one. They went at it for about five minutes, and finally ended with Eli's teeth at Emmett's throat, and Rosalie's teeth at Eli's throat.

The three of them went at it a second time. Eli held them off for about six minutes this round, but ultimately was solidly defeated, with Rosalie at his throat and Emmett holding him down with enough force that they left an Eli-shaped depression in the ground, which Rosalie smoothed over with her foot once Eli got up.

"Impressive," Jasper declared. "You could use some more practice against two adversaries at once, though."

"That's definitely my weakness," Eli admitted. "I can only listen to one mind at a time, so I only have Edward's advantage when I'm in one-on-one situations. I rely on my talent a little too much sometimes."

"Honestly, I'm impressed you held them off as long as you did," Jasper replied. "Have you had formal training?"

"Cora gave me lessons before I went off on my own. Aside from that, it's just experience I've picked up over the years - not everyone I've encountered in my travels has been as friendly as you guys are."

"Cora seems to have trained you well - you're still here," Jasper observed. "I wonder if she ever fought in the Southern Wars."

"She never talked much about her past, but I don't think so," Eli answered. "She didn't have many scars."

"Well, we'll all need to practice against multiple adversaries," Jasper responded. "I have a few pointers I can show you in that area."

Eli nodded. "So, you and me next? One-on-one?"

"Sure."

"We're going to head back to the house now," Jacob interjected. "We've got to get some sleep." He and Renesmee crossed the clearing and disappeared into the forest, in the direction of the house. I checked the time - it was nearly two o'clock in the morning. They would be tired tomorrow.

Eli and Jasper went at it for nearly fifteen minutes, and I was starting to wonder when they were going to call it a draw, when they suddenly stopped moving. They were both still standing, but Eli had Jaspers arms pulled behind his back at a horrific angle, his teeth bared against the base of Jasper's throat.

Just then Alice danced over to us and looked up at Edward, asking him something silently.

"Alice wants to practice with me," Edward murmured in my ear. "She doesn't want to keep watching Jasper getting pummeled."

"That's not what I said," Alice huffed, apparently for Jasper's benefit, as she winked at me.

"Go ahead," I encouraged them. I kept my focus on Jasper and Eli, but watched Alice and Edward in my peripheral vision - their high-speed dance, in which they rarely managed to touch each other, would almost certainly end in a draw. He could hear her thoughts as she decided on her next move, and she could see the result of each decision he made. They each stayed just out of the other's grasp, the real fight taking place in their minds. It was about as interesting as watching them play chess without moving the pieces.

Jasper and Eli fought several more rounds, with Eli winning five out of seven. Jasper beat Eli twice - the last two rounds - and there were no draws. None of the rounds lasted more than thirty minutes; some were as short as five.

"I'm really eager to see you against Edward," Jasper told him after they shook hands. "He rarely takes me down that quickly, and I've beat him at least as many times as he's beat me."

Edward growled quietly at the implication that Jasper had won more of their fights than he had. "I believe the current tally is Edward: 2968, Jasper: 2952," he stated, without interrupting his dance with Alice.

Jasper rolled his eyes. "My point is that we're pretty evenly matched. Most of the time we call it a draw after an hour or two."

"My ability to scan your thoughts doesn't give me much of an advantage with you, Jasper," Eli observed. "You seem go almost entirely on instinct - there were just a few times you slipped with your thoughts."

"Yeah, it didn't take me long to figure out I couldn't beat Edward without controlling my thoughts. I try not to plan my moves or consciously anticipate his, but I do slip occasionally. I don't think he could beat me without his talent, and I don't think we'd have so many draws. If he could turn off the mindreading for a fair fight, or if he'd try a fight with Bella shielding me, I think I could defeat him fairly quickly. You, I'm not so sure."

"Well, I can turn it off, or, more accurately, not turn it on. I'm not sure I could defeat you without it, though, because every time I beat you it was during one of your lapses in suppressing your thoughts. Want to try a round that way? It would be interesting to see how long I could hold you off."

"Why don't you do that another time," Edward suggested. "It will probably take a while, and I'd like a turn with Eli myself. We'll need to be getting back to the house soon. Phil tends to wake up early."

I looked at the time on my phone. 5:15am. We could probably stay another couple of hours, enter our bedroom through the window, and come downstairs as if we'd just woke up. Phil thought we went to a party last night, so he wouldn't expect us to be up _too_ early.

I watched as Eli and Edward began to circle one another. I couldn't help but feel a little nervous that Edward might be hurt, though I knew Eli wouldn't hurt him intentionally - it was just practice. He wouldn't tear off limbs or actually bite, but I knew from experience that some of the holds could be unpleasant. I had just seen Emmett and Jasper come out essentially unscathed, but I still felt nervous watching, more so than the many times I had watched Edward practice with Emmett or Jasper. When fighting with his brothers, Edward usually won or it ended in a draw. Eli had taken out Emmett quickly, despite Emmett's superior strength and moderate experience as a fighter. And he won the majority of the matches against Jasper, our most experienced fighter. I suspected he could defeat Edward as well, since they both could read minds, but Eli seemed to be slightly more experienced. After what I'd seen tonight, I was more glad than ever that Eli was on our side.

To my surprise, Edward won the first round, in just over three minutes. I had hoped it would be a mostly mental fight, like with Edward and Alice, but they were quite physical, Maybe it had something to do with them both being guys, or perhaps they were both focusing on their offensive rather than defensive skills.

I continued watching nervously as the two of them punched, kicked, lunged, dodged, wrestled, and threw each other to the ground. When I moved to where I could see Edward's face, I saw he wore a mask of indifference, but I recognized that mask for what it was - he was hiding his pain. I cringed as Eli twisted Edward's arms behind his back in what had to be a painful hold, and Edward dropped to his knees. I had no doubt that if it had been a real fight, Edward would have just lost two limbs. Eli forced him the rest of the way down to the ground, and leaned forward, his teeth at his neck. Fifteen seconds. I wanted to rush over and ask if he was okay, but I refrained from embarrassing him.

Jasper and Emmett called out their congratulations to Eli - they had never seen anyone take Edward down so quickly, and they seemed to have enjoyed it.

Eli shook his head. "I cheated - that really wasn't fair for a practice fight."

Edward disagreed. "No, you were right before. I was using the unique aspects of my talent against you; you should be able to do the same with me."

"I don't normally do that during a practice fight. I consider it against the rules, for the same reason as biting or tearing off limbs - it's too painful. I won't do that to you again," Eli insisted.

"What happened? What did he do to you?" I asked Edward. Was he talking about the painful hold he had him in? That didn't really seem like an explanation - while it hadn't looked pleasant, I was sure it didn't compare to having a limb torn off or having a chunk of the body bitten off. Edward had mentioned unique aspects of their talents - had Eli been pulling his memories to distract him? He had previously mentioned using it in fights. But he wouldn't do that to Edward without explicit permission, would he?

"Well, first let me explain what I did to him," Edward began. "Normally, when he scans me, the only thing I focus on, other than his mind, is my own conscious thought. That way he can hear my thoughts more easily, since I'm doing the majority of the filtering of the minds around us. In our first round, I didn't allow myself to focus on my own thoughts, but tried to react instinctively, like Jasper, and at the same time I deliberately shifted part of my focus to the thoughts around us. I watched us through Jasper's eyes, then Alice's, then Emmett's...you get the picture. When I tried focusing on two perspectives equally, he lost his concentration and I took advantage."

"I'm only accustomed to hearing one mind at a time," Eli added. "The multiple voices and conflicting perspectives were very distracting and made it difficult for me to control my focus. I hadn't even realized before how much Edward was helping me whenever I would scan him."

Edward continued his explanation. "So when I beat him, he had a passing thought that I was using my ability to hear multiple people's thoughts against him, but he wasn't using his ability to pull memories against me. I told him to go ahead and take full advantage of his talent - it's only fair."

"I flitted through his brown and gray memories," Eli admitted, looking ashamed. "I shouldn't have done that. I wasn't expecting to lose that first round so quickly, and when he gave me permission I went for it without giving it sufficient thought. I'm truly sorry, Edward. If I'd given it any thought at all, I would have realized which memories those were going to be. I was looking at the colors and not the timeline. I shouldn't have done that to you."

"It's okay, I gave you permission. I mistakenly thought I would be able to keep my focus elsewhere. I thought I was prepared for it. My own arrogance is to blame; it's not your fault."

"Still, I assure you I won't do it again." Eli paused. "Could we try another round? I'd like a chance to beat you fairly."

"Certainly." Edward's smile returned. "To make it truly fair, I'll try to keep my focus only on your thoughts, and not intentionally distract you with everyone else's. None of the Volturi guard has my ability so you have no need to practice against that, anyway."

They faced off again and went several more rounds. These rounds took much longer - around fifteen to twenty minutes each. I was a little surprised Edward won two of the first three. After that, Eli seemed to be adapting to Edward's techniques, and won three of the last four rounds.

Everyone watched the first couple or so of those last seven rounds between Edward and Eli, but after that they divided up for some two-on-one practice. Jasper went against Emmett and Carlisle, and Rosalie and Esme went against Alice. I would have liked to team up with Edward against Eli, but I didn't think Edward would like the idea so I didn't suggest it. I would bring it up later when we were alone - he might agree to that with both of us on the same team since he wouldn't need to regard me as an opponent that way.

The sun began to rise, and it eventually became light enough outside to reveal the inhuman qualities of our skin. We decided it was time to end our gathering - Renée and Phil were probably both awake by now.

We said our goodbyes, and then we all went back to our cars, except, of course, for Eli, who had come on foot. Edward and I were headed back to our house, but the rest of the Cullens were returning home to Cambridge. Carlisle and Esme should be old enough by now that Renée and Phil might start questioning the cosmetic surgery story for them. Based on the age they were claiming when Renée first met them, they should be in their mid-forties now, so it would be quite a stretch for them to show up looking like they were still in their mid-twenties. We made plans to meet up with them every weekend until the lecture/symposium, which was still four weeks away.

We pulled into the driveway and left our car just outside the garage, so as not to make any noise opening the garage door. We walked around to the back of the house, quickly climbed the tree that was just outside our bedroom, and jumped over to the ledge outside the window. I slid the window open and jumped in, and Edward followed just behind me.

"Phil's still asleep," Edward informed me. "Renée's awake but still in bed. She's trying to decide whether to shower first or go on downstairs and start fixing us something for breakfast - she wants to surprise us."

I grimaced. "Her cooking wasn't that good even when I was human. I hope we don't have to eat again this morning."

I opened our seldom-used pajama drawer and selected a comfortable-looking pair of pajama pants and T-shirt for Edward and tossed them to him. For myself, I grabbed the warm-looking light blue set that Renée got me for Christmas a couple years ago.

I fastened my last button and then turned and ran my hands up Edward's soft T-shirt-clad chest and kissed him lightly on the lips. "You can't go down there looking like this," I told him.

"What's wrong?"

"You've got dirt and leaves in your hair." I pulled out a leaf and held it up for display.

He went to shake his head over the trash can in the bathroom, and I helped pick the rest of it out for him.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Not quite. You can't go looking like _that_." He smiled as if he knew some secret joke.

I looked in the mirror. No dirt, no leaves - I hadn't even practiced fighting. "What?" I was confused.

"Your pajamas still have creases from being folded in the drawer. They don't look like they've been slept in." He looked down at himself. "And I seem to have the same problem." He walked over to the closet and I could hear him rummaging around on one of the shelves.

"Our bed doesn't look slept in either," I observed. "At least your hair is a mess. Mine looks the same as last night." I leaned forward so that my head was upside down, and shook my head before scrunching it with my hands, trying to mess it up.

I stood back up to see Edward with a bottle of wrinkle release product aimed at me. He sprayed down my pajamas, and I snatched the bottle from him and returned the favor.

"They still don't look slept-in." Edward ran his hands up and down my legs smoothing out the creases.

"I know a better way to take care of this." I pulled him over to the bed, threw back the covers and jumped in. "Snuggle with me?"

"That should help your hair, too." He smiled that crooked smile as he joined me in the bed and pulled the covers up over us. I rolled onto my side and snuggled up to his chest, resting my head on his outstretched arm. He kissed the top of my head and used his free hand to run his fingers though my hair haphazardly, further mussing it up.

I sighed contentedly, enjoying the feeling of his touch, happy to have a few minutes alone with him, but the worry of Aro's letter still in the back of my mind.

"Can I ask you something?" Edward's hand left my hair and began rubbing my arm.

"_Sure._" It sounded like the beginning of a potentially serious conversation, and I decided to let him hear my thoughts.

"I was just thinking about your conversation with Renée last night. Do you wish we could have had more children?"

I'd had no idea what he was going to ask, but I certainly hadn't been expecting that. "_Not really. I told you when I was human, I never really desired kids. Once I found out I was pregnant, well, you know how much I wanted her then, but if I'd never gotten pregnant I suppose I would have never known what I was missing, and I would have been happy with just us. If we'd had more kids, I'm sure I would love them as I do Renesmee, but I've always known that wasn't a possibility, and I've honestly never wished for more. I think our family is perfect, just as it is. Why? Do _you_ wish we could have had more children?"_ I tilted my head back to look in his eyes. He would never consider adopting a human. Why was he even bringing this up?

He smiled, the relief clear in his eyes. "You know that's the main reason I always worried you might eventually regret that I changed you. You don't know how reassuring it is to hear you really feel that way. I was always worried you were just saying that for my benefit. Now, don't get me wrong - I have never for a minute regretted changing you, but still, I took so much from you. I've just worried that you might eventually miss what you can no longer have."

"_I don't miss anything. My life is perfect, as long as I'm with you, and we have Renesmee." _I just wished the Volturi wouldn't keep trying to destroy our perfect lives. "_You didn't answer my question, though. Do _you _wish we had more children?_"

"I would have loved it if we could have had more children, but one is more than I ever dreamed possible. I'm happy with our family as it is now, just as you are. I'm just so relieved to hear you really feel the same way. You just looked so sad when you were talking with Renée. Has your acting improved?"

I laughed at his teasing remark, and then grew more serious as I thought of my response. "_I was just sad that she doesn't know Renesmee is her granddaughter. She wants a grandchild so much, and she _has_ one, but I can't tell her. She wouldn't take the truth as well as Charlie, and we don't want to give the Volturi any more reason to kill us, and I won't endanger her that way, especially with what's happening now."_

"I'm sorry." He pulled me into a hug and held me tightly.

"It's okay. I'm just glad they can know each other and that we haven't had to cut off contact with her yet. I know we'll still need to do that eventually but I'm trying not to think about it for now." We never knew what the future might hold anyway - who knew if Renée would still be living in ten years, or even if I would still be here in ten years...I wish I knew what the Volturi were up to. I really hope we aren't forced to fight them...even if we could win, what would the cost be to our family? No, I didn't want to think about that either. Edward squeezed me even tighter, in response to my thoughts. I could hear Renée and Phil whispering in their room. Phil asked Renée to join him in the shower. "_I'll shield them,_" I told Edward, before letting my shield retreat to its natural position, and then expanding it to encompass Renée and Phil.

"Have I told you lately how much I love your shield?" Edward relaxed his hold on me and traced the features of my face with his fingertips, and I closed my eyes to enjoy the sensation. "It's not nearly as much as I love you, of course, but I truly am very grateful for this shield."

After a moment, I remembered a question I had been planning to ask when we got home. "What happened with Eli tonight?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean - when he pulled up your memories. What did he show you?"

"He didn't do anything wrong. I gave him permission to use his full ability against me. I was intentionally distracting him with everyone else's thoughts; it was only fair that he be allowed to distract me with my own memories."

"But what did he show you? What was it like? You looked like you were in pain."

"It was like I was reliving the worst moments of my life. The memories were so strong, it was like I was there again. I thought it would be more like the way Renesmee's gift works, or like I was just remembering things, or like I was seeing someone else's thoughts, but it was like the things from my memory were really happening again. It brought up all the same emotions as when it was real. When he scanned Alice, I was seeing her memories as Eli sees them, but apparently it's different for the person experiencing it. I'm beginning to understand why Cora didn't like him pulling her memories."

"It didn't seem that strong with Charlie. The way he described it, it was like he was just remembering things."

"It must be different for humans. They don't have perfect recall like we do."

I nodded. That made sense. "So he showed you your worst moments? Like the call from Rosalie?"

"Yes. That was one of them." He closed his eyes. "There was also the time I left you, and my time in Rio when I was trying to stay away from you, and the time I didn't think you were going to survive your pregnancy. And Sam's memories of finding you in the forest. And when Jane..." He took a deep breath.

"So it was like Jane was here? Like she was using her power against you?"

"Well, yes and no. I was still aware of Eli and the fight, but yes, otherwise I could feel the flames as if she were here, but just in one part of my mind. It's difficult to explain. The memories didn't consume all of my thoughts, but they were impossible to ignore."

"Was it like that with Aro, too?" I asked gently. "Did you relive everything when he took your memories?"

"No, I only saw the memories he took in _his_ mind. If I didn't have the ability to hear his thoughts, I wouldn't have known Aro was doing anything."

"Does Eli fully understand what he's doing to the targets of his memory scans? When he pulled those two vampire memories for Alice, she did seem really happy, but I thought that was just typical Alice. She was reliving getting her car and seeing our wedding, wasn't she? But you and Eli were just hearing it, not experiencing it, right?"

"That seems to be how it works. I think he has a pretty good idea of what he's capable of - that's why he was so apologetic. The mental apologies he was sending me were even more emphatic than his vocal ones. The memory of Jane only lasted for a fraction of a second before he realized what he had done and stopped. He'd already won the fight by then anyway. That's what he was referring to when he mentioned not looking at the timeline - he wouldn't have intentionally pulled Jane on me. He felt bad about all the other memories too, but I did ask for it. When I gave him permission, he was focused on the fight, intent on winning, and he let his battle instincts kick in - he just started pulling negative memories without thinking about what he was actually doing to me. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have pulled more neutral memories instead - that would have been more equivalent to what I was doing to him."

I hated that he'd had to go through that tonight, but there wasn't anything I could do now, and he wouldn't have wanted me to shield him during the fight anyway. I kissed his cheek and pushed aside the hair that was threatening to fall into his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to be sorry. It's over, and I'm fine. Eli was a lot more upset than I was."

"I know. He seemed to feel really bad about it, and I don't think he'll do it again. I know you don't hold it against him, and I won't either, but I just wish you hadn't had to experience those things a second time. Thank you for sharing it with me, though, and explaining it. I know you probably would rather not have talked about it." He really was being more open with me than he used to be, and I hadn't had to press him on it much before he explained what Eli had done and how it had made him feel. He had shared an unpleasant experience without much prodding, and I knew that was not what came naturally for him - he was making a conscious effort to talk about something he would normally rather not worry me with.

I lowered my mouth to his for what I intended to be a long and lingering kiss, to show him how much I appreciated him honoring his commitment to be more open with me. He reciprocated with equal fervor, and flipped us over so that he was hovering above me, our lips still joined. Just then I heard Renée and Phil walking down the steps, no doubt on their way to the kitchen.

Edward pulled away. "As much as I'm enjoying this, we should get down to the kitchen and join them."

"You and your control," I muttered.

He smirked in response to my comment, then took my hand and pulled me up out of the bed.

"How do I look?" I twirled around like a model. "Do my pajamas look slept-in now?"

"Very much so," he replied, eyeing me up and down appreciatively. "You hair is sufficiently messy now too. Perhaps even too messy." He tucked a loose strand behind my ear .

"I'll pull it back in a ponytail." While I took care of my hair, Edward went into the bathroom and ran some water, trying to approximate the sounds of a human doing their morning routine.

We went downstairs and walked into the kitchen. Renée was at the stove, and I was hit with the overpowering scent of bacon frying. The eggs were already done, and I could see bread in the toaster.

As we entered the room, Phil glanced up at us from the newspaper he was reading, and Renée turned around slightly to greet us. "Good morning, sleepyheads! I hope you're hungry!"

I rubbed my eyes, as if still trying to wake up. "Mmmmm..." I pretended to be enjoying the smell.

Edward expertly yawned and stretched. He looked amazingly human in that instant - his acting skills really were far superior to mine. "That smells delicious, Renée," Edward lied convincingly.

The food did actually look much better than Renée's usual attempts at cooking. Perhaps her skills had improved in recent years. I noticed that she remembered Renesmee's preference for plain scrambled eggs, and realized we should probably go wake them up. They hadn't had as much sleep as they really needed, but as far as Phil knew, they had been sleeping for nearly twelve hours.

"I'll go wake up Jake and Nessie," Edward volunteered. "They wouldn't want to miss this breakfast." I heard him walk up the steps and knock loudly on their bedroom door, telling them Renée had breakfast ready, and they sleepily promised to be down in a minute.

"They're still sleeping?" Phil asked, looking up from the paper. "They went to bed so early, I thought they probably got up early and went somewhere."

"No, they don't get much sleep during the week because of staying up late to finish homework assignments, so they tend to sleep in on weekends to make up the difference." I hoped that sounded believable. They were never up late finishing homework - they always started early and it didn't take them long - but I had heard others in my classes talk about how little sleep they got while complaining about certain assignments, so it seemed logical to me that they might sleep more on weekends.

"Ah." Phil seemed to accept that explanation. He put the paper aside as Renée started placing food on the table. I poured everyone some juice, and fixed water for Nessie.

I employed Nessie's strategy and managed not to eat any of my food. I tore my toast in two, and slipped half at a time onto Jake's plate. I switched my juice with his, once his was half-empty, then switched again after he drained the glass that was originally mine. My eggs disappeared into my napkin, and I slipped the bacon over to Jake a little at a time.

Phil engaged Edward in a conversation about the previous night's football game, filling him in on the final score and all the great plays he missed. Jake joined in easily, even though he hadn't seen any of that particular game. Renée asked Renesmee and me about our trip to Rio, and Nessie did a lot of the talking, which was what distracted Renée enough to allow me to slip so much of my food over to Jake. She seemed to be helping me intentionally - I'd have to thank her later.

When the breakfast dishes had been cleared away, we all went into the family room, and Nessie asked about the old home videos Renée had brought, so we ended up spending several hours watching those and copying them to DVD.

I didn't have to watch for very long before I realized why I had suspected I should be embarrassed by these home videos. There on the big screen, for all to see, was my plain human self, in early nineteen-nineties attire, wearing the thick glasses I used to have before my LASIK surgery, and there had been several instances recorded which prominently displayed my propensity for tripping over nothing. I was grateful that Emmett wasn't here to make jokes about my clumsiness, although I had no doubt he would end up seeing them eventually. As expected, birthday parties and Christmases dominated the video. However, in addition to watching me open presents and blow out birthday candles, there was also video of the many extracurricular Renée had enrolled me in when I was too young to protest - there was a violin recital, a ballet performance, an ice skating practice, a tap dancing lesson, a clogging performance, a soccer game when I was about four years old, and a T-ball practice. I was also apparently in a school play when I was nine - I had no lines and played the role of a bush, but Renée had proudly recorded my "performance" nonetheless.

* * *

Renée and Phil stayed until Wednesday morning. Renée's school system was on Fall Break that week, and Phil's baseball season was over, so neither of them had to work all week. They spent four days with us, and were then going to spend the second half of Renée's time off visiting Phil's sister and nephews in Texas.

I felt bad that throughout most of their visit with us, my mind was elsewhere, and I wasn't truly able to enjoy their visit. Renée, perceptive as always, had asked me why I seemed so distracted, and I had told her I was just thinking about an upcoming mission that was a little unusual in nature. It wasn't even a lie, really. She didn't press me on it, knowing I couldn't divulge any details of my "mission."

Edward and I spent the last three nights of their visit scanning pictures while Renée and Phil slept. Edward brought his scanner and laptop into my office so we could keep each other company while we completed the monotonous task. Despite vampire speed, we were limited by the speed of the scanners themselves, and it was a rather time-consuming chore, as Renée had brought thousands of photos. We also made a show of scanning some during the day, but we let Renée think we were just scanning some of them, when we were actually copying her entire collection. I was determined to get the task completed before Renée left, because I wanted her to be able to take the photos with her - who knew what might be happening with our family in the near future, and I didn't want to take any chances on her being deprived of these tangible memories of my childhood.

We also gave Renée and Phil a tour of the campus, as we had done with Charlie, and Eli stopped by on Tuesday for a couple hours, as he wanted to meet Renée. Other than that, most of their time here was spent on meals, and just talking and watching some movies together.

I guiltily breathed a sigh of relief when we finally dropped them back off at the airport. I was so glad she had been able to visit, but I was relieved that we could drop the human charade.

Just a little more than three weeks, now, and Aro would be in town.


	23. Symposium

Chapter 23: Symposium

The days and weeks passed slowly between the time we received Aro's invitation and the date of the lecture and symposium. While I knew it was good that we had time to prepare, I almost wished we hadn't been informed four weeks in advance. It was torture, wondering what they were up to, and waiting for the day to arrive so we could get the meeting over with.

Eli joined us again the two weekends following Renée's visit, for more strategy discussion and more practice fighting.

The following Wednesday was sunny, and he called me to say he was skipping class, and to not bother picking him up. When I asked why, he just said he would tell me later. I wondered what was up, but didn't press him on it.

Friday was also sunny, so I called to see if I should pick him up or if he was skipping again. He laughed and said he probably shouldn't skip twice in one week. I took the Ferrari to pick him up, since Edward drove separately on Fridays.

On our way to class, I asked him again why he had skipped on Wednesday.

"I'll tell you, but you'll need to keep one piece of information from Edward, at least temporarily. Can you agree to that?"

"Well, it depends on what it is, and why you need me to keep it from him," I answered honestly.

"It's to protect someone's safety, and you would only need to hide it from him for about a couple weeks, then I'll tell both of you everything."

Two weeks. That would be just after Aro's visit. He needed me to keep something from Edward so that Aro couldn't learn of it. What could Eli have learned that would affect anyone's safety? Who was in danger? If it was one of our family, I didn't know if I could keep it from Edward. "Whose safety?" I asked.

"Someone you haven't met."

"Okay, I can keep a secret about someone we don't know. As long as it doesn't endanger anyone in my family."

"I skipped class Wednesday because Cora was here. She came across my scent in the forest, as well as yours and Edward's and the rest of his family, from when we were hunting last weekend after our strategy and practice session. She was concerned something might have happened to me, thinking I had encountered and perhaps fought a large coven, so she searched the area until she picked up my scent again here in Hanover, and found me at my apartment. I told her about you and Edward and your family, and she's interested in meeting you, but she wants it to be after the meeting with Aro. She doesn't want him to learn of her, or for him to become interested in her, but she has some things she wants to discuss with you once he's gone. I saw some things in her mind that she wasn't ready to share yet, and I need to keep those things from Edward."

"What did you see?"

"Well, it's probably best if I don't give you any details yet either. I actually don't know all of the details, just a few partial thoughts she let slip."

"So what am I supposed to keep from Edward? You don't want him to know she visited?"

"No, you can tell him she visited, and that she said she might be passing through the area again in the near future and would like to meet the family. Don't mention her fear of Aro...it might pique Aro's interest if he heard that in Edward's memory."

"Oh, okay. That shouldn't be a problem. Although I doubt Aro would think much of it...I suspect most of our kind fear meeting the Volturi." It occurred to me that it had been several years since Eli and Cora had seen one another - back before his adoption of our diet. "What did she think of your new eye color?"

"She was definitely startled by my eyes," he laughed, but it sounded a bit off. "I explained about my new diet, and of course she thinks it's odd, but she seems to understand that this new lifestyle is better suited for me, with my mindreading ability." He looked like he was about to say something else, then changed his mind.

"So did you enjoy her visit?" I asked.

"Well, 'enjoyable' isn't really the word I would use to describe her visit, but I'm glad she stopped by. I hadn't seen her in a few years. But because of certain things I heard in her thoughts, I'm going to have to avoid Edward for the next week, because I gave her my word that I would try not to let anything slip that might draw Aro's attention. I'm going to have to pass on the family gathering this weekend, and if it's sunny on Monday or Wednesday next week I may skip class again rather than ride there with the two of you."

"What if it's cloudy? He'll still be here listening to us while you're on campus."

"I think I can stay focused on the professor during class, or start reading the textbook if my mind starts to wander. I should be okay as long as I can avoid a direct conversation - if he asks me what's wrong, or if I hear him wonder why I'm avoiding him, my mind is going to go to Cora's visit."

The conversation then turned to the chemistry assignment we had due that day. I wondered what "partial thoughts" Cora had let slip, but I would have to wait to find out. I pondered Eli's request for us not to mention Cora to Aro. Her gift was interesting, and potentially useful, but Aro himself could make an equally accurate determination regarding the nature of someone's intentions, so he would have no need of her gift. Perhaps she was not aware of the full extent of Aro's gift?

* * *

Later that night, when Edward got home, Jake and Nessie had already gone to bed, and we snuggled up on the sofa for what would probably be the only time we would have alone together for the rest of the weekend, as we would be spending the weekend with the family at their home in Cambridge.

"How was lab tonight?" I asked, wondering why he looked rather stressed.

"I'm glad it's over. Only three more labs until the end of the quarter. I'm not sure I'll sign up to do this again."

"Is Chloe still bothering you? I thought you said she was losing interest after you embarrassed her by reminding her to call you Mr. Cullen during class."

"It's not just her. Some of the other girls' imaginations have been going wild lately. It's like being in a room full of Jessicas, only worse." Edward rolled his eyes. "I always thought her thoughts were bad, but they were quite innocent compared to what some of these girls come up with."

"I could come over after my chemistry class and shield them for you," I offered, tracing his face with my fingertips.

"That's very tempting, but I think I can make it through three more labs. Besides, I rely on their thoughts to let me know who needs help. There are so many who won't ask when they need to."

"Let me know if you change your mind."

"I will." He brushed his lips against mine, and I thought we might be finished with conversation for the night, but then he pulled back, as if suddenly remembering something else he wanted to say. "Did Eli say why he skipped on Wednesday?"

"Yeah, he said Cora had stopped by. I think she was just there that one day - he said she seemed to be in a hurry."

"So she's already gone? I wonder why he didn't bring her over to meet us. Did he say if he told her about us?"

"Yes, he did, and he said she was interested in meeting us but I guess she didn't have time. He said she might be back in the area again in a few weeks and he can probably introduce her to us then."

"Good, I'd like to meet her. She seems like a character from what he's told me."

"Also, he said he won't be going with us to Cambridge this weekend."

"Why not? Is something wrong?" Edward looked concerned.

"No, nothing's wrong. He did ask me to keep his reasons quiet for now, though. Honestly, I don't see the importance of the secrecy, but I promised him not to talk about it yet. He said he would give both of us the full story in a couple weeks."

"A couple weeks?" He raised his eyebrows, and I knew he recognized the significance.

"I think we should trust him on it."

Edward nodded. "I guess he'll be avoiding me for a while, then?"

"Probably so, but don't take it personally."

"Is he still planning to hang out with Emmett and Rosalie while we're at the symposium?"

"As far as I know. He didn't say anything about changing those plans."

"I'll be glad when this meeting with Aro is over. I wish they would just leave us alone and let us exist in peace." Edward kissed along my jawline and down my neck. "I want to enjoy my wife without thoughts of the Volturi intruding," he murmured.

I cupped his face in my hands and tilted his head to bring his mouth to mine. It still thrilled me that I was strong enough to do that, though he wasn't exactly resisting me. We still had another week to worry about the meeting with Aro, but I would make Edward forget about it for tonight. I couldn't let down my shield, due to my promise to Eli, but there were certainly other ways to distract him, and I planned to take advantage of each and every one of them...

* * *

The weekend of the symposium finally arrived. The family all met at our house the night before the event. Everyone was tense, wondering what Saturday would bring. Alice had tried to look for Aro, Renata, and Felix, but she was getting nothing but blackness - apparently because their plans revolved around meeting with Renesmee.

Alice occupied herself with selecting appropriate attire for each of us, and even ran an outfit over to Eli at his apartment. I wasn't sure why Eli needed to look good, since he was planning to stay out of sight during the event. Alice was probably just trying to stay busy.

Jasper hacked into the computer systems for some of the nicer hotels in the area, and learned Mr. Ogianesi had checked in at seven o'clock Friday evening, along with two other guests whose first names were Renata and Felix. He checked the names of the other current guests but none matched the names of any of the guard members we were aware of.

So we knew that at least the three of them were here. We speculated on whether they would make their presence known to us before the symposium. While we were trying to be prepared for the unexpected, we all felt at this point that Aro would probably wait until we were at the event to speak to us.

Jacob wanted to take a group to patrol the area around the house, but Jasper talked him out of it. We didn't need to leave scent trails all over that would tip off any guard members that we were looking for them. We were safer staying together at the house - they were unlikely to attack with us all in one location, with me there to shield everyone, and if they did attack, we stood a better chance if we stuck together.

I wondered again if we had made the right decision in not calling our friends and acquaintances who had come to witness for us before. If the Volturi's real plans were to bring the entire guard and attack us, we would be severely outnumbered. We had even convinced Jake to have the pack stay in La Push. We were essentially staking our strategy on an assumption that they were not planning to attack during this visit - that the entire guard was not coming. Carlisle and Jasper both thought it made sense strategically that they would want to try to repair relations with us, however temporarily, or for whatever ulterior motives they might have, and it would probably be in our best interest to play along for the time being. If this was intended to be a peaceful visit, with only Aro, Felix, and Renata, we wouldn't want to show up with an army and give them real reason to feel threatened by us. Alice's vision of our family being involved in normal activities tomorrow got firmer when we made the decision not to invite any of our friends, providing further assurance it was the best choice.

The time for the lecture finally arrived. We decided that only the four of us invited to the symposium would attend the lecture, even though it was free and open to the public. Everyone else would wait at the house until after time for the lecture to start, and would then take their assigned posts outside the building where the symposium would be held.

I felt seriously overdressed for the lecture, as I walked into the lecture hall with Edward, Renesmee, and Carlisle. The other college students and members of the community were dressed in their normal jeans, hoodies, and sweaters, and several students carried backpacks. I recognized a couple students from my Freshman Studies class looking in our direction - I smiled and waved, but they looked startled, and perhaps embarrassed to have been caught staring at us, and they hurried off.

After we sat down in the auditorium I noticed a few others, here and there, who were dressed in more formal attire. Presumably these were the ones attending the fundraiser that would follow the lecture. Alice had assured us the formal attire was expected at the fundraiser, though I was fairly certain this was merely a guess on her part, rather than her psychic ability, since she had admitted she couldn't see the event due to Nessie's plans to be there.

I looked at the program I had picked up on my way in, and noted that the other two speakers were scheduled to speak first. It said Dr. Bohacz was a member of the board of a museum of antiquities that was associated with an Australian university, and Dr. Georgiadis was director of antiquities at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

I visually scanned the audience and looked around to see if I could spot the lecturers. My eyes quickly fell upon three finely dressed men in the front row. They had the row to themselves. The one in the center was sporting a neat jet-black ponytail, and there was a gray-headed man sitting on either side of him.

"That's Aro, in the front row?" I leaned over and whispered the question in Edward's ear.

He nodded. "Renata and Felix are sitting directly behind him."

"What's he thinking?" I asked quietly.

"He's reviewing his speech. Repeatedly." Edward rolled his eyes.

That made sense - Aro was focusing on one thing so as to avoid letting Edward hear his thoughts on what he was planning for this meeting he had invited us to.

"How's he doing with the bloodlust, around all these humans?" I still couldn't understand why he would willingly subject himself to the burn - why he would mingle with humans who were nothing but a source of nourishment in his eyes? Why would he spend time educating humans about archaeology? He was accustomed to life in a castle, where he seldom dealt with humans he was not planning to drain. The human employees like Gianna were used to interface with the human public; it was probably rare for Aro, Caius, or Marcus to have any interaction with them.

"He's in control," Edward assured me. "He feels the burn but he's not focusing on it. I'm sure he fed before coming here."

I only half listened to the lectures given by Dr. Bohacz and Dr. Georgiadis. Australian excavations and early Greek civilizations might be fascinating under normal circumstances, but not when I was so worried about what might happen later in the evening.

Finally, "Dr. Ogianesi" was introduced, and Aro went to the microphone and launched into his lecture.

He wore tinted eyeglasses. They were not as dark as sunglasses, but had enough brown tint to make his eye color indeterminable. It seemed to be a wise choice - sunglasses would have looked really odd, and contacts could have disintegrated or popped out while he was speaking.

He spoke with his typical enthusiasm - if I hadn't known better, I would have had the impression that he was thrilled to have been invited to speak at such a prestigious university, and I would have thought that the study of past civilizations was his life, his passion. I would have thought he was enjoying himself.

Perhaps he _was_ enjoying himself. But why? Was he anticipating whatever he had planned for us when this lecture was over? He made eye contact with us occasionally throughout the lecture, but his expression did not change.

Several minutes into the lecture, I leaned over to Edward and whispered, "What is he thinking now?"

"He's focused entirely on his presentation. He's directing all of his conscious thought to the words he's speaking, and aside from that he's just reminding himself to act human - to blink, move around, and make eye contact with the audience. He noticed us and he's pleased we're here, but he didn't allow his thoughts to dwell on us. He seems determined to make us wait until the fundraiser party to find out why he's really here."

"What about Felix and Renata?" I asked.

"They're both listening intently to Aro's lecture. And keeping an eye out for any potential threats, of course."

Aro continued his enthusiastic discourse, and as I listened, I looked around at the audience. I could see everyone clearly, despite the dim lighting, and everyone seemed to be listening with rapt attention, smiles on their faces. Little did they know that they were listening to the self-appointed leader of the vampire world. Supposedly Caius and Marcus shared equal authority with him, but from my past observations, it seemed that Aro held the most influence and set the direction for the others. I always thought of Aro as the main one of the three.

Finally, the lecture was over. We filed out toward the back of the auditorium, and I noticed Aro, Renata, Felix, and the other two lecturers being ushered out a side door near the front.

"Well, that was really weird," Renesmee commented as we stepped out into the lobby."He almost seemed normal."

"He can blend with humans when he wishes." Carlisle held the door open as we exited the building. "He has rarely done so in recent times, but he has had centuries of practice. When I stayed with them during my younger years, Aro entertained me with tales of some of his past adventures. I do not believe he has ever lived among humans, as we do, but he has been known to participate in various nighttime human activities."

"But human customs and social norms have changed quite a bit in the last few hundred years, haven't they?" I asked. "Blending in at the opera in the sixteen hundreds is a bit different than mingling with college students, professors, and museum directors in the twenty-first century, at an event like this!" I nearly giggled when I suddenly wondered what sort of dance moves Aro might have when the dancing begins.

"Is something funny, love?" Edward looked at me quizzically.

"No, nothing...I'll tell you later," I mumbled, annoyed at myself for getting sidetracked with such nonsense. "Wouldn't it be more difficult for him to fit in here?"

"I never said I thought it was easy for him," Carlisle clarified. "When I knew him, he mingled with humans only briefly, for specific purposes, and not very often. Human traditions do change quickly, and acting human would not come naturally to him. His gift does give him an advantage, though."

"He has all of my memories," Edward reminded me, "so he knows everything I've done to fit in among modern humans, and he can also draw upon the memories of any human he's touched in the last several years, so he has the information he needs to fit in - it's just a matter of putting it into practice."

We split off from the crowd of students who were headed to the parking lot or back to the dorms, and made our way over to the next building, where the symposium was to be held.

Once inside, I spied Aro and the other two lecturers standing about halfway across the large room, engaged in animated conversation with one another. Aro held a beverage in his hand and pretended to sip it occasionally. Renata and Felix were not far behind him.

I flexed my shield, reassuring myself that the four of us were all still protected. I was determined that Aro was not going to take any of our thoughts or memories today,

I was wondering whether we should just stand around waiting for Aro to come to us, or if we should walk over to where he was standing and initiate a conversation, when Edward began walking in Aro's direction and gestured that we should follow him.

"Ah, my dear friend Carlisle! I'm so glad you could make it!" Aro exclaimed as we drew closer. He turned to his two fellow lecturers. "Paul, Aleksey, I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine, Dr. Carlisle Cullen. Carlisle, these are my colleagues, Dr. Paul Bohacz and Dr. Aleksey Georgiadis."

Dr. Bohacz extended his hand. Carlisle shook hands with him, and then with Dr. Georgiadis.

"This is my brother, Edward, his wife, Bella, and his sister Renesmee," Carlisle introduced us. "They're all students here at Dartmouth." We all shook hands with each of the two men.

Carlisle then surprised me by extending his hand to Aro. Aro looked surprised but quickly recovered and returned the handshake. I saw a flicker of disappointment as he realized Carlisle was shielded. I successfully suppressed a smile.

"Antonio." Carlisle greeted Aro by his assumed name. "It's good to see you again. Will you be in town long?"

"No, I'm headed back tonight, actually. I have a meeting in the morning in Cheiti that I wasn't able to reschedule. I'll be flying out tonight, as soon as this symposium is over."

"Well, I'd better go mingle with the other guests," Dr. Bohacz excused himself. "It was nice meeting all of you."

"I should do the same." Dr. Georgiadis excused himself as well. "It was nice speaking with you again, Antonio. I'll leave you to visit with your friends."

The two human museum directors took off in opposite directions and began chatting with other guests.

"It is _such_ a pleasure to see each of you again!" Aro beamed at us. "Are you enjoying the festivities?" He gestured grandly around the room.

"Yes, Aro, it's all quite nice," Edward responded, a bit impatiently. "We are, however, curious to know why we are all here at this event. What is your real reason for coming here?"

"Ah, my dear Edward! I have long been interested in antiquities. It's been a hobby of mine for, oh, a couple of millennia, now!" He laughed. "Come, let us move to a less crowded area, and I will answer all of your questions."

We followed Aro, Felix, and Renata over to a far corner of the room that had been previously unoccupied. Felix and Renata lingered a few feet behind Aro, appearing ready to protect him, but otherwise giving the impression that they weren't interested in our conversation.

"The real reason I am here," began Aro, "is exactly what I told your dear little one in the invitation I sent. I am hoping to begin repairing the relations between our families."

Before any of us could respond to his statement, he took off his tinted eyeglasses, revealing golden eyes matching our own.

I stared at him in shock. Did he figure out some way to alter his eye color without changing his diet? Did he feed on animals before coming, to try to get on our good side? But it would take several weeks to get all of the human blood out of his system - he would've had to have been feeding on animals for months. Was this some sort of trickery? Were his eyes really golden? Yes, they were - I could see them clearly with my perfect vampire vision, and he was definitely not wearing contacts.

"You've decided to try our lifestyle?" Carlisle sounded hopeful but unconvinced and a bit confused.

"Yes! Carlisle! For so long, I had assumed that your strange diet would cause you to weaken with time. I was simply delighted when young Edward stopped by to visit us and shared his memories of you! I was exceedingly astonished to learn that not only had you not become weakened, but you had managed to find others to join you in your odd quest! Then, when we last met, and I saw how extraordinarily powerful your family has become, and how strongly bonded you all are to one another, I began to wonder if you might be on to something!" Aro smiled broadly.

"So you've changed your diet?" Edward asked incredulously, though the answer was obvious by this point. "How long ago? Seven years? You've been feeding from animals for seven years?"

"I may have slipped a few times," Aro admitted, still smiling. "But I think the same is true for some members of your family?"

None of the four of us standing here, I thought to myself. And no one in the family has slipped within the last seven years - or even the last fifteen years. I managed to refrain from voicing those thoughts. It would do no good to provoke Aro or to belittle his accomplishment.

"So what do you think of the diet, now that you've tried it?" Carlisle asked.

"The taste leaves much to be desired, and animal blood is not as satisfying, of course, but I already knew that from Edward's and Alice's memories. It does have its benefits, though! I've gone on some hunts in the jungles of Africa. Simply invigorating! Hunting lions is so much more exciting than feeding on helpless humans! Humans can't even run fast enough for us to chase them!" He laughed heartily.

"Have the others adopted the 'vegetarian' diet as well?" I asked.

Renata and Felix silently removed their glasses, revealing their amber eyes. So they _were_ paying attention to the conversation.

"Many of us have," Aro answered. "I'm still working on some of the others. Caius is not yet persuaded of the benefits, and although Marcus tried the lions I had imported for him, he still feeds from Heidi's catches as well. We've allowed the various members of the guard to decide for themselves, but a surprisingly large number of them have adopted the diet."

"What's with the antiquities lecture?" Edward asked. "Are you making it a habit to mingle with humans now?"

"Why, yes! I've actually spent quite a bit of time among humans lately! I've been working for the museum for nearly three years now! It's the ideal occupation for me, really, considering my love of collecting things. I've found the experience quite fascinating! The eye color makes it easier to blend in, of course, and humans can be quite entertaining at times. I see why you enjoy living this charade - it provides quite a challenge! I haven't been this active in centuries!"

I realized then that not only were Aro's eyes golden, but the milky film that had previously been a distinctive characteristic of his eyes was now much less pronounced. I recalled what Vladimir had said about the milkiness being caused by inactivity. It seemed Aro had indeed become more active lately. Perhaps, in time, his eyes might lose the milky quality completely. I realized Edward was looking around the room, as if searching for something.

"Well, it's good that you've finally seen the light," Carlisle mused, seeming unsure of what else to say.

Edward's cell phone buzzed and he made a show of checking the text message. It was from Alice, and said simply "danger. blood". I glanced around the room and didn't see anything unusual. People were still standing around the room, in clusters of conversation. Some technicians were fiddling with the microphones and sound equipment, probably getting things set up for the question and answer session. Personnel from the catering service were bringing food into the room and arranging it on a buffet table. There were two people standing by the table with punch and other beverages, getting refills. A university employee was standing at the door, collecting tickets for admission from some late arrivers, who appeared to be college students. Everyone seemed to be having a pleasant time, and I detected no signs of any sort of fight erupting. No one was standing particularly close to us, and I smelled no open wounds.

The director of the university's anthropology department took the microphone just then and began welcoming everyone. Edward, Aro, and I all seemed to realize at the same time what was about to happen. Edward took off at a brisk human pace toward the people getting refills, just as Aro exclaimed, "The punch bowl!"

"Don't breathe!" I hissed. I then took in one last deep breath before holding my own breath. Carlisle and Renesmee, who had not seen the text, looked at me questioningly, but complied.

Aro echoed my command, and Renata and Felix held their breath, looking confused.

One of the workers bringing in food was pushing a heavy cart and had looked up at the speaker when the welcoming remarks began. He was no longer looking where he was going, and his cart veered slightly to the right and was now on a direct course for the unsuspecting person who was helping himself to a punch refill. I recalled from my fuzzy human memories the shattered crystal plates on my eighteenth birthday, and Jasper's wild, empty eyes and feral growls as he struggled to get to me.

Edward placed himself between the unsuspecting human and the oncoming cart. It would appear to anyone watching that he was just getting in line for some punch. One second later, the cart bumped into Edward, who pretended to be knocked to the floor by the impact, and I could hear the catering employee begin to apologize profusely. Edward held his leg, pretending to be hurt, but insisted he would be okay, that it was just a bruise. The worker hurried off, probably grateful that Edward was not angry with him, or perhaps worried about getting all the food set out on time. The person who was getting the refill offered Edward a hand to help him up from the floor, but he stood up on his own, insisting he was fine. He got himself a cup of punch to complete the act, and limped back over to us, pulling out his phone to check the latest text: "disaster averted."

We all exhaled audibly.

"That would be so convenient," Aro muttered to himself.

"Yes, our sister is very important to us," Edward stated emphatically.

"Yes, yes, of course she is!" Aro's smile returned. "She just saved us from a rather large disaster! If that human had crashed into that crystal punch bowl... The collateral damage with a crowd this size would have been such a shame." He shook his head ruefully, still smiling. "I must admit, I've grown rather fond of Paul and Aleksey!"

I shuddered to think of what nearly happened. Renesmee and I had never tested ourselves in the presence of human blood from an open wound, and I doubted Aro, Renata, or Felix would have made a great effort to resist. Edward and Carlisle would not have been able to hold back the five of us. There would have been a massacre, and Aro would have seen to it that no human present escaped alive, as our secret must be kept. I wondered what he would have done. He would probably have to destroy the entire building in order for it to look like a natural human disaster. A fire, perhaps? I forced the morbid thoughts from my mind.

"Yes, indeed, it would have been a real tragedy." Carlisle responded sincerely.

Renesmee placed one hand against my cheek and showed me how she was afraid she might not have been able to resist a human covered in blood. The thought distressed her greatly. She wanted to find a safe way to test and build up her tolerance, perhaps using donated blood. It was a not a bad idea; in fact it was something that might benefit all of us.

Aro looked at Renesmee, a sense of wonder in his eyes. "I had nearly forgotten about that - you can share your thoughts through your mother's shield, even though your father can't hear her even when she's shielding him. Do you know how you do that?

'No," Renesmee spoke for the first time. "We're not sure how it works. I've just always been able to do it. Maybe it's because I'm her daughter?"

"Hmmmm... I wonder..." Aro looked contemplative. Was he considering letting her test it against with Renata? "Can you get through other shields?"

"I don't know. I've never tried."

"Renata?" Aro was still smiling.

"Yes, Master?" Renata stepped forward.

"Try to block Renesmee." He then nodded to Renesmee. "Go ahead, dear one, see if you can show something to Renata."

Renesmee took a step toward Renata and slowly reached forward, palm extended, toward her face. Renata's brow furrowed and before Renesmee could touch her, she jumped back about two feet.

"It's okay, Renata, dear, she won't hurt you. Let her try again," Aro commanded reassuringly.

Renata stepped back to her former position in front of Renesmee, and Renesmee tried again, reaching slowly toward her face. Renata closed her eyes and stood determinedly in place. When Nessie made contact with her cheek, Renata gasped in surprise. Nessie released her face and stepped back, and Renata moved back to stand with Felix once again.

"What did she show you?" Aro could not contain his curiosity.

"It looked like a classroom, with several humans present," Renata answered.

"It was a memory of her psychology class," Edward added. "Nothing too exciting."

"So you are enjoying school, are you, little one?" Aro addressed Renesmee.

"Yes, I enjoy school quite a bit." Nessie replied.

"Well, how _interesting_ that you can get through Renata's shield! And how fortunate it is for me that your peaceful family bears me no ill will!" Aro addressed Renesmee, and then turned to Edward. "I'll admit that my curiosity got the better of me, there, but I also suggested that little test as further assurance that I come here in good faith. I want us to be friends. I must admit, though - as you have already heard in my thoughts, no doubt - that I'm feeling a bit at a disadvantage here. Would it be too much to ask you to share your thoughts with me once more?"

"Yes, Aro, it would." Edward replied stiffly.

"That is fine! I do understand! I had to ask though! You must forgive me - it is always so fascinating getting so many people's perspectives from one mind." Aro smiled wistfully.

"So you just came here to show us your yellow eyes?" Edward asked Aro, getting back to the earlier topic of conversation, his mouth set in a hard line.

"Well, I did want you to see for yourself, in person. Would you have believed me any other way?"

"No, probably not," Edward admitted.

"I _was _invited here by the university as a speaker, due to my ties with the museum, and Demitri told me you were staying in the vicinity, so I thought it the perfect opportunity. I sincerely hope that we can someday be friends again. I understand I have lost your trust, and I wish to rectify that. I also understand it will take time. Fortunately, time is something we all have in abundance!" Aro smiled broadly at us again. He turned to Carlisle, "I truly wish to regain your friendship, Carlisle, my old friend. Your disapproval pains me so. I hope you can eventually find it in you to forgive my past transgression."

"Perhaps, in time," Carlisle responded. "You've certainly made some steps in the right direction."

"Wonderful! It pleases me to hear you say that! I can't ask for more, at this point. Well, I suppose I should go mingle with the humans in attendance, and keep up the charade! Do stay, and enjoy the rest of the event." Aro walked over to the table of beverages and allowed someone there to strike up a conversation with him. Felix and Renata followed him at a distance, and pretended to be engaged in a conversation of their own while keeping an eye on Aro, and on us.

The introductory remarks had concluded several minutes before, and people were now filling their plates at the buffet, so we went to get in line to collect our props.

We managed to find an empty table, where the four of us could sit and pick apart the human food, as I had seen Edward and his siblings do many times back in high school. By putting only a small amount of food on the plate, and then picking it apart, and pushing and smearing it around, the plate could be made to look as though it had once been full of food, with a only few leftovers remaining that the person had become too full to consume. We lifted our glasses occasionally, pretending to take sips.

We noticed Aro, Renata, and Felix sitting at a table with the other two lecturers and two women whom I assumed were their wives. The vampires had their backs to us, and I wondered if they were going so far in their charade as to actually swallow human food, or if they were able to disguise their lack of eating.

When the humans in the room were nearly finished eating, the three lecturers took their places behind a special table set up with microphones, and took questions from those in attendance. Some of the questions were very academic, and very detailed, and did not have simple answers. Most people asking questions gave their name and told where they were from before asking their question, and I began to realize that there were a number of people in attendance who had traveled from various parts of the country for this event.

Aro, or "Antonio," answered the questions directed toward him with an air of professionalism, and he exuded enthusiasm as usual. His exuberance seemed to be contagious, and the other two guest speakers became more and more enthusiastic in their responses as well. The attendees who were asking questions seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. Finally, the person who had made the introductory remarks stood up and announced the end of the question and answer session. A band began playing some music, and some of the attendees began dancing.

We remained at our table, as did several of the humans who were still picking over their food or lingering in conversation, and we observed Aro as he made rounds through the crowd, not dancing, but talking at length with some of those who had been asking the most questions. Several of the people who weren't dancing began to leave. I was ready to go home, myself, but we thought it best to remain until Aro left. Eventually, we began to feel conspicuous just sitting when nearly everyone else was dancing or at least standing, so we joined the dancers. I enjoyed dancing a bit more as a vampire than I did as a human, but as I was enjoying moving to the music with Edward's arms around me, I also listened to Aro's conversations, so my attention was divided. Carlisle danced with his granddaughter, and when a few people began to stop and stare at their grace and dancing ability, they had to tone it down a bit.

After about thirty minutes, Aro walked over to us, Renata and Felix trailing behind him.

"It was good to see you all again!" Aro exclaimed. "We're headed back to Italy now. I have a private jet waiting for us, and I must make it back in time for my meeting in the morning. Hopefully with our next visit we can spend more time together!"

"Perhaps," Carlisle answered. "I have to tell you, I am extremely pleased with your change of heart regarding diet. I wish you well in persuading the others."

"Yes, yes, indeed!" Aro turned and exited the building, along with his two guards.

"They're really leaving," Edward told us. "We can go home now. The others will meet us there."


	24. Controversy

**A/N: First, I would like to apologize to those of you who are expecting Alice's next memory scan to be in this chapter. I intended to include it as the second half of this chapter, but since it is taking me so long to get that part finished, and since this part turned out long enough to be its own chapter, I decided to break the chapter up and go ahead and post this part as chapter 24. Alice's scan will be in the next chapter.**

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Chapter 24: Controversy

We all arrived back at the house around the same time. I knew the others were all eager to hear what had gone on inside the room with Aro. Eli had probably seen and heard parts of it through Edward's mind, but the others would only know what Eli had texted them during the event. Alice had obviously seen _something_ to have warned us of that near-disaster, but I knew with Renesmee there she wouldn't have been able to see our interactions with Aro.

The atmosphere of the room was much more pleasant and relaxed than it had been a few hours earlier: the immediate threat seemed to be over, and our family was all still here. Edward had assured us again in the car on the way home that Aro was gone and that we could relax.

As I sat nestled up against Edward, I looked around the room, noting how each couple seemed to be sitting even closer together than usual. Rosalie was in Emmett's lap...well, that wasn't all that unusual. Alice was also sitting in Jasper's lap. Carlisle sat with his arm around Esme, pulling her close, and I recalled how she ran to him when she arrived at the house. They were the only couple, aside from Nessie and Jake, who had been separated during the meeting with Aro. The embrace and chaste kiss they had shared upon being reunited was somehow more intimate than any of the public displays we had been subjected to by Rosalie and Emmett; I had turned away to give them privacy. I knew Jake was relieved to have Nessie back in his arms -- he had gone against all of his instincts in order to honor her plea that he stay behind while she went to face Aro without him by her side. She sat snuggled up with him, one of her palms resting against his face. She was probably replaying the night's events for him. Eli sat on the other side of Edward; I wondered if he felt out of place among so many couples.

"So are you going to fill us in, or what?" Emmett demanded of Edward, as he stroked Rosalie's arm.

"I believe Eli has told you of Aro's dietary change," Edward began. Everyone nodded.

"Are you sure he's not faking it somehow?" Jasper asked.

"He really has changed his diet, and it seemed that he was being honest about his reasons. He saw how strong we had become, and realized it was not _despite_ our diet, but -- at least in part -- _because_ of it. His thoughts very closely mirrored his words in everything he said tonight. I could tell he was focusing on his speech intentionally, trying not to let other thoughts slip through -- he tried to do that the last time we saw him too, but he has become more adept at it. I don't think he told us any outright lies though -- it would have been too hard to for him to conceal that. I think most of what he told us was rehearsed, and worded in a way that would keep his stray thoughts to a minimum."

"How serious is he about the diet?" Carlisle asked. "As much as I'd like to believe he's taking it seriously, I'm having trouble believing he's developed a respect for human life after all of these years."

Edward snorted disdainfully. "He's no more concerned about humans than he's ever been. He's slipped from the diet a number of times, and not all of them were truly accidents. He does seem fascinated with the benefits, though -- the way it makes it easy to mingle among humans. It's a novelty for him. It's been centuries since he's taken any sort of risk whatsoever. I think he gets sort of a high from the thrill of risking exposure among humans. It's rather ironic, considering that the Volturi are the ones who made that rule in the first place. He's very confident, though, that he won't slip -- otherwise he would still be sitting in his castle."

"I knew that was too much to hope for -- that he was starting to change." Carlisle looked disappointed. It would mean so much to him for his old "friends" to come around to his way of life.

"I think he's rather overconfident," I said. "If it hadn't been for Alice today --" I broke off mid-sentence as my thoughts shifted to the question I'd been meaning to ask: "Hey, Alice, what exactly did you see, anyway?"

"I had been watching for our family members tomorrow. Suddenly we shifted from normal activities to packing and moving and covering our tracks like when one of us has slipped. I tried to focus closer and closer to the event. I was finally able to see Aro -- he was attacking someone who was already bleeding. Eli told Edward as soon as I'd seen the vision, then he texted me to tell me to text Edward so we wouldn't give away Eli's presence."

Some of the family looked confused.

"If I'd suddenly developed psychic abilities," Edward explained, "Aro would have suspected that Alice was close by and might have gone looking for her. If he had walked around the building he would have caught Eli's scent and perhaps caught up to him. One touch and he would have known about Eli's abilities. As it was, I didn't like his thoughts about Alice when the situation was under control."

"What was he thinking?" Jasper asked, bristling at the idea of Aro having plans for Alice. He looked as though he was ready to go charging off after the Volturi leader.

"Nothing new -- just coveting her gift, as before. Then he seemed to realize he was slipping, and he refocused on his desire to repair relations with us."

"How sincere did he seem in that regard?" Jasper asked, relaxing only slightly.

"He seemed more sincere than I expected. His skill at hiding and controlling his thoughts seems to have improved though -- he focuses on his own conscious thought almost exclusively so that the things he wishes to keep private don't slip through. As I said, it was almost like his thoughts had been rehearsed. But he did seem to want to be friends with us -- with Carlisle, in particular. He wanted to improve our opinion of him -- that seemed to be his primary goal for this trip."

Jasper was nodding in agreement. He had the look on his face that he gets when he's sizing up an opponent or analyzing enemy tactics. "It sounds like he wants to placate us. He doesn't want us as enemies. He was terrified of Bella the last time he was here. He wants to get on her good side, and he wants to regain Carlisle's respect. He needed Nessie there to keep us in the dark until he was ready to do his performance for us. I think he wanted you there, Edward, because he was hoping you would validate that his thoughts matched his words."

"They did, for the most part, but I could tell he was sharing only what he wanted to share. The part of our conversation where he seemed the most uncomfortable was when Bella asked if the others had committed to the new diet as well. I think he answered honestly, but he seemed to have been hoping that we wouldn't ask that question."

"He seemed the most uncomfortable when he mentioned Caius," Eli interjected. "I think he was hoping he wouldn't have to tell us they weren't in agreement with one another on the diet, but he knew he couldn't lie about it with Edward there."

"That is very unusual," Carlisle commented. "Normally they consult with one another until all three are in full agreement before any decision is made on anything. That's why it sometimes takes so long for them to arrive at a decision."

"So you think they're at odds with one another -- Aro and Caius?" Jacob asked, grinning as he looked from Eli to Carlisle for an answer. "That could be interesting."

"The three of them have been functioning almost as one entity for millennia," Carlisle responded. "It's almost inconceivable that Aro would go off on his own without Caius and Marcus being on board with whatever he had planned. They probably arrived at an agreement for Aro to do the dietary experiment on his own. Caius is probably in agreement with whatever the master plan is, but just wasn't willing to convert to the diet himself. If they can get us to trust even one of them, then none of them would have need to feel threatened by us. Caius probably saw his participation in the diet as unnecessary, and Aro was probably displeased that Caius could not be persuaded to join him in his escapades. "

"How do you think Aro got so many of the guard to adopt the diet?" Rosalie asked. "Eli said he was thinking of several guard members when Bella asked if the others were following the diet."

"Right," Edward answered. "Besides Renata and Felix, he was thinking of Jane, Chelsea, Afton, and Santiago, and there was another I didn't recognize, who must have joined the guard within the last few years."

"Jane?" Alice shrieked incredulously. "_Jane_ has adopted our diet?"

"I was shocked, too," Edward responded, "but he was recalling seeing her before he left Italy for this trip, and her eyes were amber. I don't think he could have faked that memory. I'm sure she hates the diet, but she has always been very eager to please Aro."

"Yeah, I've noticed that too," I agreed. "I could see her doing it just to please him. She seemed rather jealous of me when Aro expressed interest in my talent when we were in Volterra. I think she would do almost anything to ensure she keeps her place as his favorite."

"Do you think they're all doing it just to please Aro?" Eli asked. "I seemed to sense some thoughts of control in Aro's mind when he thought of those following the diet. I think some of them may be doing it because they fear the consequences if they don't. Even if he didn't order them to adopt the diet or threaten them, it would still be wise for them to stay on Aro's good side, if they want to continue serving in the guard."

"I think you're right," Edward replied. "It's probably a combination of wanting to please him and trying to stay on his good side for fear of what might happen otherwise. That's what I was getting from Renata's and Felix's thoughts, and it's probably similar for the rest of them. Renata seemed to see it as a sacrifice expected of her in the line of duty as Aro's personal shield, and Felix seemed concerned with keeping his place in the guard. He enjoys his job and doesn't wish to jeopardize it."

"So what do we do now?" Jacob asked. "Everything just goes back to normal until we hear from them again?"

Edward shrugged. "There's not much else we can do. He's gone for now. It could be years before we hear from them again."

Carlisle nodded in agreement. "Edward's right. All we can do is go on about our lives, and we'll deal with any threats as they arise."

"That's not _all_ we can do," Jacob disagreed, his voice gradually increasing in volume. "I was ready for a fight. _We_ were ready for a fight. We could have taken them. There were only three of them here -- "

"Jacob," Edward warned calmly. "That would have started a war with the most powerful coven in existence. We don't want to do that."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with the dog," Rosalie announced. "I'm tired of them controlling our lives and threatening us. I think maybe it's time we took back the control. You said it yourself, Jasper -- they're afraid of Bella, afraid of us. Aro was here because they felt threatened by us -- not the other way around! I think we really missed our chance. If we had gotten rid of Aro, Renata, and Felix, that would have really weakened their power. Maybe we should invite them back for a friendly hunt. We could take out a few of them at a time. We could -- "

"Rosalie." Carlisle's calm voice interrupted her tirade. "There is still hope that this entire situation can be resolved without violence. I cannot support or condone any plans for an unprovoked attack."

"Unprovoked?" Jake roared. "You think it would be unprovoked? These bloodsuckers came to Forks intending to kill us all! Or have you forgotten? What's happened to your perfect memory? Edward, how can you sit there so calmly? They wanted to kill your daughter!" He paused, waiting for a response, but Edward just sat there with his eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

I suddenly felt myself growing angrier. Jake was right. They _had_ tried to kill our daughter. They had come with the intention of killing our perfect, sweet baby. They had come to destroy our family, and though they weren't successful, the threat remained. That threat would always be present for as long as the Volturi remained in power. "He has a point," I said, my voice piercing through the brief silence that had followed Jake's outburst. Everyone turned to look at me. "I think we should consider doing something. We've sat around doing nothing for the last ten years, and they're still out there, waiting for an opportunity to destroy us!"

Edward gaped at me and then ran his hands through his hair as he turned to Jasper. "Tone it down, Jasper. You're getting all of us riled up."

"Sorry." Jasper closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

I felt the intensity of my anger begin to subside, but I still felt we should at least discuss our options. "Jasper's not responsible for what I said," I insisted. "We should at least listen to Jake and Rosalie before shooting down their ideas."

"I've kind of wondered why you guys never went on the offensive," Eli said, glancing at Edward as if gauging his reaction before continuing to address the rest of the family. "I know Edward's reservations, but I've wondered why it seemed no one had ever suggested it. With the help of the friends who came to witness for you before, you could go on the offensive and meet them on _your_ terms. You could pick them off a few at a time."

"That's what I was saying!" Rosalie exclaimed. "We wouldn't have to face all of the Volturi guard at once; we could pick them off a few at a time! It would be almost too easy! Emmett, help me out here." She nudged him forcefully.

"Hey, babe, you know I'm always ready for a fight. I'll be right there with you! Bring 'em on!"

"Jasper?" Rosalie prompted.

"I agree it's worth considering," Jasper said carefully, shooting Edward an annoyed look. "I'm tired of living with the threat they pose to Alice. Aro covets her gift far too much. We would need to take out more than three in the first phase of the plan, though; otherwise the others might all band together before we could move on to the next small group. Although, if Aro were out of the picture, I'm not sure how well Caius would be able to control the guard. A lot of them seem to crave Aro's approval. Caius is filled with hate, and he lacks Aro's magnetic personality. Even with Chelsea there, I'm not sure Caius could maintain control of the guard on his own."

"He wouldn't be on his own; Marcus would still be there too," Carlisle reminded him. "He may not be as vocal in his opinions as the other two, but we shouldn't underestimate him. Aro wouldn't keep him around if he wasn't contributing."

"Marcus lacks interest," Jasper insisted. "I've never met anyone so apathetic and consumed with sorrow. Aro and Caius are probably just using him for his gift -- I don't think he cares about power the way Aro and Caius do."

"He did always seem bored and apathetic, but why is he so sorrowful? Does anyone know what happened to him?" I asked.

"He lost his mate over two thousand years ago," Carlisle answered. "She was Aro's sister, and he told me she died in battle."

Edward nodded, confirming what Carlisle had said. "Marcus thinks of her constantly. She did look quite a bit like Aro. And Aro does use Marcus for his gift, but we can't assume we know how Marcus would react if we killed Aro. I suspect he would do whatever Caius wanted."

"Who cares about Marcus?" Rosalie shrieked. "Listen to Jasper -- Caius wouldn't be able to control the guard as well without Aro. We should have taken care of Aro and the other two while they were here." She sighed loudly in frustration.

Jasper shook his head. "No, Rosalie, I don't think we had much of a lost opportunity last night. I'm not sure we could have gotten through Renata. We probably would have succeeded only in eliminating Felix and instigating a war that we're not quite prepared to finish."

"I can handle Renata," Renesmee said confidently. "At the very least, I can get her away from Aro."

"You will do no such thing," Edward told her in his most authoritative fatherly voice.

"Absolutely not!" Jacob thundered, echoing Edward's sentiments. "You will be staying where it's safe."

"You're not facing them without me," Renesmee countered.

"Please!" Esme begged. "No more talk of this. I can't bear to think of losing any of you. The risk is far too high." She looked as though she would have been crying if she were able to shed tears.

"We're not fighting unless we're forced to," Carlisle assured her softly. "And I don't think that will be any time soon, considering the Volturis' current efforts to repair relations with us."

As Carlisle was speaking, I looked at Edward. His face was tense and his lips were pressed together in a thin line. He looked down at me and I could see fear and pain flash in his eyes as he struggled to maintain his mask of control. I forced my shield away briefly. _Edward, I don't know what I would do if anything happened to you, either, but if we could make the world safer for Renesmee, for our entire family... Just think about it._

"Yes, love, think of our daughter," Edward whispered in my ear. "You know she won't stay out of this. This isn't the way to make things safer; this would simply be inviting danger. As much as I would enjoy ripping Aro to shreds, I can't put Nessie in harm's way. We need to keep her as far from the Volturi as possible. And I need to keep _you_ as far from them as possible. As tempting as it may be to fight, we must choose the path with the lowest risk. To do otherwise is to be gambling with our daughter's life."

I nodded. My goal had been only to protect her, but Edward was right. Going on the offensive would only place her in more immediate danger. Suddenly I felt guilty for suggesting that we even consider an option that could put Renesmee at more risk. What kind of mother was I? Still, it was so very frustrating to do nothing. We did have to consider all the options, but ultimately we had to do whatever was safest for our daughter and for our entire family. I reached for Edward's hand and linked my fingers with his. He visibly relaxed and began running his fingers through my hair in a soothing manner.

"How can you not even consider it?" Jacob was demanding of Carlisle. He stood in his anger and towered over our gentle leader. "The majority of us seem to be in favor of taking some sort of action. If you don't want to participate, we can plan something without you, but I'm tired of just sitting around!" Jake was becoming increasingly agitated and I began to become concerned that he might phase here in the house and start a fight...with Carlisle Just then Renesmee placed her hands back on his face and he began to regain control of himself.

"Slow down and think this through, Jacob," Carlisle commanded, still calm but clearly in control even as he looked up at Jacob from a seated position. "It may be centuries before Aro tires of his current game, and in the meantime, based on what we've learned tonight, the Volturi do not pose an immediate threat to any of us. It is entirely possible that this situation could resolve itself over time without the need for violence. Why take that risk now? I know you've been gearing up for a fight over the past few weeks, and perhaps you're feeling disappointed that you didn't get to have that fight, but think about it. It's better this way. Why put any of the family in unnecessary danger? Why put your_ wife _in that sort of danger?"

"I would _never _put her in danger!" Jacob spat, offended. "Edward and I would both make sure she stayed away from any fighting. She could..." He trailed off, looking frustrated, seeming unable to come up with a specific plan for keeping her safe.

"See? There would be no safe place. None of those ideas would work," Edward told him. "We can't leave her alone, unprotected, and neither of us want her anywhere near a battle. Please see reason, Jake. The chances of us fighting the entire Volturi guard without losing anyone are slim to none. And Renesmee is our most vulnerable member -- she's half human, and the limits of her durability have not been tested. I have no desire to see them tested -- ever. Do you?"

Jacob let out a frustrated sigh.

"Why don't you go for a run and cool off?" Edward suggested, his conciliatory tone indicating he knew he had won the argument.

"Come on, Jake. That's not a bad idea." Renesmee stood and headed for the door, knowing he would follow. Jake's heavy footsteps followed her light ones, and the door clicked shut behind them.

Just then Edward growled loudly for no apparent reason. I looked up to see him glaring at Eli, who just grinned and shrugged.

"Is something wrong, Edward?" Carlisle asked.

"He was planning a suicide mission," Edward said, still glaring at Eli.

Eli rolled his eyes. "It was just a passing thought, and it wouldn't be a suicide mission."

"You don't understand what you would be going up against," Edward insisted. "It _would_ be a suicide mission. And I know the difference between a passing thought and one with substance."

"Would you care to let the rest of us know what he's talking about?" I asked Eli. Their silent conversations could be so exasperating.

"I was just thinking that I might be able to take out some random guard members on my own if you decide to fight. None of them know I exist. I could scan their thoughts from a distance, and use the information from their thoughts to determine how to catch individual guard members alone. If I fought them one-on-one, they wouldn't stand a chance."

"Eli, you're an outstanding fighter," Jasper told him, "but the guard has centuries of training, centuries of practice. Many of them would be at least an even match for you, and some of them could disable you before you could even made physical contact. And you have no guarantee that a fight that begins as one-on-one would remain one-on-one."

Eli shrugged again. "It doesn't matter. I won't go off on my own. I was just thinking of what I could do if you decided to go after them, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen."

"It's not," Alice agreed. Had she seen something?

"So this is settled?" Carlisle asked hopefully, looking around the room as if expecting someone to express dissent.

"I'm okay," Jasper said. "I think it was worth considering, but I agree it's not the best course of action right now. I'll work on strategy so we'll be ready if the time comes that we need it."

"Bella?" Carlisle asked.

"I'm fine. Edward and I discussed it while you and Jake were . . . talking. I wasn't thinking it through very well when I spoke up earlier. It's just so frustrating waiting around for an attack. But you and Edward are right -- we have to take the path with the lowest risk. I couldn't bear to lose any of you."

Rosalie stood, her perfect face contorted in anger and defeat. "Let's hunt," she said to Emmett, pulling him up. "I need to go kill something." They left, with Rosalie slamming the door behind them. I hoped it wouldn't need to be replaced.

"Eli?" Carlisle prompted.

"Oh, I wasn't trying to start a fight, and I assure you I won't go off on my own...at least not without your blessing. But I'll be glad to help if you ever need me. If you ever do end up fighting them, I'll be there with you."

"We appreciate that, Eli," Esme told him, her voice sounding emotional.

The conversation turned back to the evening with Aro at the symposium, and we continued talking for a while, further analyzing Aro's statements and reactions. We picked apart everything that was said, but didn't come to any new conclusions or gain any significant insights.

It was around four o'clock in the morning when the discussion finally seemed to be coming to an end. Eli rose to leave, but Alice stopped him.

"Eli?" Alice asked tentatively.

"I was wondering if you were ever going to ask," he laughed as he sat back down. "Yes, I have plenty of time. Are you sure about this?"

"Yes, I want you to finish the scan. I want to know how I ended up in the asylum, and how I ended up... as who I am now."

* * *

**A/N: I plan to post at least the first half of Alice's memory scan by next weekend...possibly all of the scan if I manage to get it written by then. I'm sorry the updates have become less frequent lately...I'm just having trouble finding writing time, and these next several chapters will have more plot and less fluff, which makes them more difficult and time-consuming to write. I want to assure you that I have every intenion of finishing this story...but the updates will probably continue to be a little less frequent than they were when I first started.**

**I also have some great news -- I now have a beta: javamomma0921! We're serving as betas for each other now! We have been hashing out the plot for the rest of this story over the last few weeks. I've had the overall plan in place for a while, but she has been a huge help in working out the details and suggesting added scenes, and I know the finished product is going to be much better due to her involvement. :)**

**Speaking of javamomma0921, her story "The Life and Death of Edward Anthony Masen" has been nominated for a Faithful Shipper Award. If you have not started reading her story yet, I encourage you to do so (it's in my Favorites), and if you would like to vote for it on Faithful Shipper you can do so at thefaithfulshipperawards dot webs dot com, and click the "Vote" link.**

**Also, I don't normally do recs for other fics, but I'd love for you to check out Kelsismom's latest story, "Fire Becomes Ice." It is AU, splitting off after chapter 8 of Eclipse. It is a Freaky Friday style plot, but very well-thought-out and well-written, believable within the rules of the Twilight universe, and I absolutely love her sense of humor and the way she has kept the characters true to their personalities. I've found myself looking forward to my weekly dose of Jakeward and Edwob. You can find the story in my Favorites.**


	25. Insanity

_"Eli?" Alice asked tentatively._

_"I was wondering if you were ever going to ask," he laughed as he sat back down. "Yes, I have plenty of time. Are you sure about this?"_

_"Yes, I want you to finish the scan. I want to know how I ended up in the asylum, and how I ended up... as who I am now."_

Chapter 25: Insanity

The room quieted and we all turned to watch Eli and Alice. I was beyond curious about what had happened to Alice, and I knew the others all had to be as well. On one hand I understood her wanting to delay learning about this less pleasant and probably painful part of her human life, but on the other hand it was difficult for me to comprehend how her curiosity had not gotten the better of her before now. It had been six weeks since Eli had done the first scan - six weeks that she had known the answers were available, but had chosen to wait.

"You're ready right now?" Eli confirmed.

Alice nodded. She was still sitting in Jasper's lap, with his arms around her. Jasper squeezed her a little tighter.

"Okay, picking up where we left off... You're at home, and you just finished eating breakfast..." Eli paused and then inhaled sharply, looking shocked at what he had heard or seen in her mind. "There it is - you just saw yourself as a red-eyed vampire."

We all gasped and hissed in surprise.

"I don't know why I never thought of that," Carlisle mused. "That's probably what got you committed to the asylum. I wonder if the knowledge triggered some sort of breakdown, or if you tried to tell people about it and they thought you were crazy."

Eli continued narrating the scan. "It wasn't exactly a vision, not like you have now, but the idea came to you suddenly and you began to worry that it was somehow your future. You didn't recognize that you were seeing yourself as a vampire, of course. You just knew that you were seeing yourself with frightening ruby red eyes and pale skin. You went on to work that day, but you continued to worry about what this might mean. You wondered what was wrong with your eyes and whether this might be a forewarning of your death. Usually when the future presented itself to you, it made sense. But this time you didn't know how to interpret it."

Eli paused, and after several impatient seconds Alice asked, "Can you continue, please?"

"I'm still scanning. There's nothing new during the next three days. You still went to work each day, and did your chores around the house, but you're continuing to worry about this idea of your future that had come to you. You're trying to decide whether you should tell anyone. You decided it was too strange to be told to your parents; you didn't want to worry them. You didn't want to worry your sister either, but about four days later you finally confided in her. It scared her, and she didn't have any more ideas on what it could mean. She suggested maybe it was just a bad dream, but you're convinced you hadn't dreamed about it while you were asleep." He paused again. "The next day, you got another letter from your pen pal."

"What did it say?" Alice sounded a little too eager - Jasper emitted a low growl. Alice shot him a look that silenced him.

"It said, _My Dearest Mary Alice, I write to you today with wonderful news. I will be in Biloxi next week for a job interview, and I would like to visit you at your home. I plan to obtain employment in the area, and I would like to ask your father's permission to begin courting you properly. I will stop by your house early Tuesday evening. I am looking forward to finally meeting you in person. All my love, Nick."_

"I'm liking this Nick guy less and less," Jasper complained.

"Oh, come on, Jazz. I don't even remember him! How important could he have been?" Alice rolled her eyes, but then stretched up to whisper something in his ear so softly that even I couldn't hear, and he smiled.

"The next few days are much like the ones before," Eli continued. "But you're becoming more and more certain that something bad is about to happen - that the red eyes mean something - and you have no idea what it might be. You're looking forward to finally meeting Nick. You're wondering what he looks like and worrying about what you're going to wear. Now you're adding embellishments to one of your dresses. You're - . " Eli looked up at Edward who was handing him a sketch pad and pencils.

"Please?" Alice asked. "I want to see the dress."

Eli handed the completed sketch to Alice and she smiled.

"I like it! I might even be able to adapt this design to something more modern. Hmmmm... Oh, okay, continue please."

Eli resumed the scan. "This is Tuesday... You went to work, like usual. Afterward, your neighbor who you rode to work with dropped you off at your house, like usual. You start to walk into the house, wondering when Nick will get there, when you hear someone call out to you from under the large tree in your front yard. He called out your name, 'Alice'. You look over in that direction, and see what you deem to be an extremely handsome man. You wonder if this could really be Nick. You're walking closer, and - "

"That's the vampire from the newspaper clipping!" Edward interrupted.

"You're right," Eli said. looking stunned. "The image is a little fuzzy, but... Nick is the vampire who changed Cora! And Jesse and Fernando. He must be the one who changed you too, Alice."

"Eli?" Edward said sharply. They seemed to engage in a silent conversation, and after a moment Edward's features relaxed slightly.

"What?" I demanded. "Not all of us can read minds, you know."

"Cora should be visiting us next weekend," Edward explained. "It seems she may be able to shed some more light on Nick, or Dr. Smith, or whatever his real name was. Eli didn't know of his connection to Alice, though. He was just as surprised as I was."

"So this Nick created at least four newborns within a one or two year time frame," Jasper mused. "And at least three of them are talented. But why was Alice the only one who lost her memory?"

"That is really strange," Alice agreed. "Can we continue the scan? Maybe we can find out."

Eli picked up where he had left off. "He's standing in the shade of the tree and he's wearing a hat that casts a shadow over his eyes. You walk closer to him, enamored by his physical appearance. You nervously make some conversation, nothing significant, just greeting one another and making small talk. He takes off his hat and you realize he has red eyes - not the bright red as you foresaw for your own future, but a darker red. You're instinctively frightened, and feel threatened - not just by the color of his eyes, but at how he's looking at you. Your thoughts are becoming more confused. You're screaming, and you've closed your eyes. You open them, and he's gone. He's nowhere in sight. You've collapsed onto the ground, still screaming. It's getting very confused and fuzzy now, but it seems you've been carried into the house by your parents."

"So when I saw his eyes, that's what made me go crazy?" Alice asked.

"I don't think you were mentally ill, but it's possible you could have looked that way to your parents," Eli answered. "But you finally calmed down enough to speak, and you started babbling about how you were going to have red eyes, and how Nick has red eyes too, and how he was under the tree but disappeared into thin air. Your memory here is rather confused, but I'm catching some fragments of conversation between your parents. It seems Nick had indeed stopped in earlier to ask permission to court you, and he had also expressed concern about some things you had written to him in the letters you sent - things about having premonitions."

Alice looked confused. "But I didn't tell him about anything like that - at least, not in any of the letters you told me about. Were there more that you hadn't mentioned?"

Eli shook his head. "No, you never told him about that in your letters. He must have learned about it some other way. Shall I continue the scan?"

"Yes, please."

"He also apparently told your parents that he had been studying to become a doctor, and that his job interview had been with the asylum in Biloxi. He had spoken highly of the facility and may have suggested that you might be able to benefit from some of the new treatments available there. There's more conversation there but it's too hazy and confused for me to make out. Now you're riding in a car... You're being carried into a building... It's the asylum. You're protesting vehemently; you 'know' that if you go through those doors your life will be over. You're inside the building... You are begging and pleading with your parents but they try to assure you that it's just an overnight evaluation and promised they will return for you the next day. An asylum employee is escorting your parents away. Your mother is looking back at you and she looks like she might be having second thoughts about leaving you there, but she's being urged on out the door. Your thoughts are becoming more confused again... " Eli paused, still looking intently at Alice as he continued his scan. After a few seconds, he looked up uncertainly. "Edward, did you get anything from that last little bit?"

Edward shook his head. "No, it's too hazy. I think she was hysterical. I doubt she remembered much from those hours even in her last human days."

Eli resumed the scan. "You're waking up... Wait - This doesn't make any sense. That day was too short."

"What do you mean?" Alice asked, confused.

"The day was too short. There weren't twenty-four hours in that day. It was around seven in the evening when your parents left you at the asylum - you looked at a clock as you arrived. The confused thoughts lasted a little over four hours. Then it immediately jumps to you waking up. There's a small window on one side of the room and some sunlight is streaming in. It should be nearly midnight, but it seems to be more like eight or nine in the morning. It's like there are some memories missing, but there's no gap in the index."

"So you usually see memories even during the times I was asleep? You didn't tell me about any dreams - were there dreams you haven't told me about?" Alice asked, seeming excited about the idea.

"No, dreams are too fuzzy to make out, but time spent asleep does take up space in the index, and I can tell from the index how pleasant or unpleasant the time was - either due to dreams or the quality of sleep. But here, I'm not sure that you even have any memory of going to bed. There's no indication you were asleep, but then you're suddenly waking up the next morning."

"Perhaps whatever happened during the night was so disturbing that she blocked the memories out?" Carlisle suggested.

"I suppose it's possible," Eli answered, not sounding convinced. "I don't know that I've ever scanned anyone before who had blocked their own memories. But it seems like I should still be able to find them in the index even if the memories themselves were inaccessible, like the ones that are too faded. And why would she have blocked the time she spent asleep?"

"I don't know." Carlisle shrugged, seemingly out of ideas.

"What happened next?" Alice prompted.

"Your head feels cold. You touch your head and realize your hair is gone. They must have shaved your head during some of those hazy memories, or during the time frame that's completely missing from your memory."

"I've always suspected that's why my hair is so short," Alice said softly. "From what I've read, that was a common part of treatment for schizophrenia and some other mental illnesses."

"Yes, some of the things that were done to the mentally ill during that time were appalling," Carlisle said. "Shaving the head was actually one of the least disturbing of the things that were done to those patients in the name of science."

"Are you sure you want to continue this, dear?" Esme asked.

"I have to know," Alice insisted.

Eli focused on Alice again. "You're very distraught about your hair, and as you fully wake up you're realizing where you are. The room is familiar to you. I'm getting the impression that we may be missing more than a few hours - it may have been days or weeks. It's very odd - the index appears to be intact; I couldn't tell there was anything wrong until I looked for the actual memories." Eli shook his head in confusion and then resumed the scan. "Someone brought you breakfast. You're still sobbing about your hair, thinking how it had just been starting to grow back and was shaved again. Yes, I think we must be missing several weeks there."

Weeks? It seemed odd that Eli could access Alice's entire human life up to this point, and then there was a gap that was weeks in length that even Eli couldn't access. And how could the room seem familiar if she had no memory of it?

"If I had blocked that time from my mind because of how disturbing it was, how was I remembering that it wasn't the first time my hair had been shaved?" Alice was thinking along the same lines as I was, and she was beginning to look frustrated.

"I know, Alice," Edward told her. "This seems to be producing more questions than answers so far. But there are still a few days' worth of memories left. Maybe we'll still find some clues."

Alice nodded. I knew it must be discouraging for her to learn that some of her memories really were lost. She looked up at Eli, waiting for him to continue.

"It's him - Nick. He's in your room. You don't seem to find his eyes to be so frightening or shocking anymore, but you're not entirely comfortable with him either. You wish he would leave you alone. He tossed you some clothes and you're getting dressed under the covers.

"What do the clothes look like?" Alice wanted to know.

"Nothing special - a brown top and a ruffly skirt that's kind of long. You think they're ugly but you're grateful to have some real clothes. He's standing with his back to you... You're climbing onto his back. You know that if you don't, he'll pick you up and carry you, so you're cooperating. He's taking you out the window - you're on the fourth floor so it's a bit of a jump. You close your eyes, hating the feeling of falling, but knowing that you always land safely. He's taking you into the forest behind the asylum... He's running with you... He stopped. You're getting off his back, happy to be stretching your legs. You're wondering why he always brings you out here and why he always takes you back to your room at the asylum. You want to trust him; you want to believe he's the same Nick you were pen pals with, but he is so strange - his strength, his speed, his eyes. He tells you that you'll be like him someday, but you already knew that. You recall the premonition you had of yourself with red eyes - the thought is still disturbing to you but you don't freak out like you did the first time...you seem to be getting used to the idea." Eli stopped abruptly, looking annoyed. "It happened again. One second you're in the forest with Nick, and the next you're back in your room."

"What happened back in the room?" Alice prompted.

Eli shook his head as if trying to clear away his frustration and then took a deep breath and continued. "You're back in your bed, alone in the room. You no longer have the clothes he brought. You've finished eating - it looks like it may have been lunch - and you're wondering if your parents will come back for you soon. You touch your head to scratch an itch, and realize your hair is gone. You seem surprised and confused, as if you didn't already know. You've started crying again, remembering your long hair and wondering how long it will take it to grow back. You recall Nick visiting and jumping out the window with you - or was that a dream? It seemed so real, yet you also have the feeling that you'd had the same dream numerous times before even though you could only recall the one time. The door to your room opens and a man in a white coat comes in and takes a seat on a stool next to your bed." Eli's brows drew together in confusion. "He just called you 'Miss Riggins'." He looked up at Alice.

"They thought I was someone else?" she asked. "Was he in the wrong room?"

"You correct him, telling him your name is Alice Brandon. He writes on his notepad, muttering to himself that he thought you were past this. He tells you slowly, as if you might not understand, that your name is Mary Louisa Riggins. You notice his name tag - Dr. Conrad. You tell him he must be in the wrong room, that you are Alice, and that your parents are coming to get you that day. He describes your parents and your little sister, and you realize that he does know who you are, but he continues to address you as Mary. You decide to stop arguing with him on the name, for now. You ask if Nick visited, still wondering if that was real. Dr. Conrad looks confused and tells you that you've never had any visitors. You tell him it must have been a dream and ask when your parents will be back. He asks you to describe the dream, and you tell him about Nick jumping out the window with you and taking you into the forest, and how he climbed a tree with you on his back, and leaped from the treetop to the window to get you back into the room. He's frowning, writing furiously on his notepad as you speak. He asks what color Nick's eyes were in the dream. You feel like it's a trick question but you answer him honestly and tell him they're still red, like they were yesterday, and ask why no one believes you."

"Wait - " Alice stopped him. "I described getting back into the room to this doctor, but you can't find those memories?"

"That's right," Eli answered. "It doesn't make any sense. Apparently you lost those memories after you had this conversation with the doctor. But you also seem to think this is the day after you were admitted, and we know there must have been at least several weeks that have passed, since we know your hair had been shaved more than once and it had started to grow back again. You apparently lost the memory of those first weeks in the asylum sometime between the time you were in the forest and when you finished eating lunch."

I wondered what could have caused her to lose her memories like that. It seemed she would remember something for a while, then block it later. Had Nick done something to frighten her so much that she'd blocked the memories? But if she had been blocking traumatic experiences, as humans have been known to do, wouldn't they have been blocked right after they happened, instead of weeks later?

"Maybe she hit her head on the way back into the room?" Jasper asked Carlisle.

Carlisle looked thoughtful. "With a head injury, she could have had both retrograde and anterograde amnesia. With the retrograde, memories could be recoverable but inaccessible to Alice, which could explain why Eli is able to find some memories. Her inability to remember anything from her human life on her own would be considered retrograde. Anterograde is different - that's when short term memories fail to be stored in long term memory. If she had anterograde amnesia, Eli wouldn't be able to recover the memories because they were never stored..." He shook his head. "I don't think that makes sense in this situation. She wouldn't have been able to remember the trip to the forest or the reentry through the window long enough to be asking the doctor about it. And her first memory gap was at least several weeks long, and she seemed to remember that time period up until the trip outdoors with Nick."

"Right, she was remembering the part Eli can't access," Jasper mused. "And even after she returned from the trip with Nick, she seemed to remember that her parents left her at the asylum, but not anything between that time and when Nick showed up."

"I think you're on to something, Jasper." Edward said.

We all looked at Jasper expectantly. What had Edward heard in his mind? So far he hadn't said anything I wasn't already thinking myself.

"Maybe that's his talent," Jasper speculated.

"What do you mean?" I asked, impatient for the explanation. I looked around and everyone except Edward and Eli looked as confused as I felt. Did he mean Nick's talent had the effect of causing her memory loss? Maybe some sort of offensive weapon like Jane's or Kate's, but so traumatic it affected a person's memories?

"Maybe Nick can manipulate memories," Jasper answered. "Eli and Aro can read them; maybe this guy could delete them or edit them."

"Deliberate manipulation?" I asked. "You think he's selectively removing her memories?"

"It certainly seems like a possibility," Carlisle responded. "Whatever was causing it happened repeatedly. I had considered that it might have been drug-induced, but that still wouldn't explain why she could remember something for weeks and then suddenly forget large portions of that time period."

"I think I see what you're saying, Jasper," I said, still turning the idea around in my mind. "So Alice was left at the asylum and lived there for weeks with her memory intact, then Nick took her for a stroll in the woods, and then after he took her back to her room he wiped her memories from the time she arrived at the asylum up until just before his visit? And then later he came back and wiped out her memories of how she got back to her room, and that's why Eli couldn't find those memories even though she remembered it shortly after it happened?"

"That would be the theory," Jasper confirmed.

"And it could also explain why Aro couldn't find Alice's human memories," Edward added. "Maybe Nick's gift is also what caused her memory index to be separated. Apparently Aro's gift can only detect the memories from the most recent index. He doesn't see an index like Eli does; he just touches a person and absorbs all the memories."

"But why would Nick have selectively removed memories weeks after the events occurred?" I asked. "If he wanted to protect himself from exposure, he should have wiped all of her memories of him, not just certain parts."

"I think he wanted me to look crazy," Alice said, leaning back against Jasper. "I just told the doctor a red-eyed demon took me to the forest and returned me through a fourth floor window. Combine that with my initial hysteria and the gaps in my memory - it's no wonder they kept me in the asylum." She looked up at Eli. "Can we continue?"

* * *

**A/N: So, had anyone guessed that Nick was the vampire in the 1918 newspaper clipping? What about Nick's talent - had anyone guessed that before this chapter? If not, did you figure it out before Jasper did? :)  
**


	26. Unraveling

Chapter 26: Unraveling

Eli took a deep breath and again concentrated on reading Alice's memories.

"The doctor is still writing... He's talking to himself. He had thought the shock treatments and hydrotherapy sessions were helping - he seems confused by your setback. He decides to lengthen the sessions. What he's saying isn't making any sense to you; you wonder if he's working on charts for another patient. You ask him again about your parents and when you can see them. He tells you that he still hasn't heard from them. You insist that they promised they would return today. He suggests that you not get your hopes up. He left your room... You spend the rest of the day alone in your room. You're falling asleep... And we've just jumped ahead again. You're in a different room now. There are no windows but there's a small light in the corner. Nick just brought you a tray of food - he's dressed in the uniform of an asylum employee, and you don't seem surprised to see him."

Eli paused, seeming to continue scanning. I looked up at Edward. His eyes were closed and I knew he was still focused on watching the scan through Eli's mind. I glanced around the room. Alice still looked slightly frustrated; she was learning so many details from her last human days, and yet gaining so few real answers. She kept her eyes on Eli, waiting for him to continue, while Jasper rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. Carlisle was leaning forward, eagerly awaiting the rest of the scan, and Esme leaned against his shoulder, looking worried. I remembered how she had asked Alice earlier if she was sure she wanted to continue this scan; she seemed concerned that Alice might learn more than she really wanted to know. Some of the memories Eli was accessing would, no doubt, be unpleasant.

"He stayed to watch you eat," Eli continued, "and he calls you by your real name, which you appreciate. You had a pleasant conversation and you seem to have enjoyed his visit. He looked as though he enjoyed it too. He left when you finished eating."

Jasper growled again when Eli mentioned Nick enjoying the visit.

"Not like that," Edward assured him. "He doesn't seem to be attracted to her in that way. Their relationship seems to have shifted from the romantic nature of the pen pal letters. Nick seemed to enjoy the conversation, and seemed to find her human perspective on things amusing. Alice was just glad to have someone to talk to who didn't seem to think she was crazy. I'm sure she didn't have many opportunities for social interaction in the asylum."

Alice whispered something in Jasper's ear and he smiled and nodded. Alice turned her attention to Eli again, waiting for him to resume the scan.

There was a brief silence while Eli scanned ahead some more before continuing. "A doctor stopped in later in the day. It's not the same doctor as before, but he's calling you 'Mary' like the first doctor did. You don't bother to correct him. He asks if you've seen Nick lately. You tell him no, remembering how they didn't believe you when you first told them he was working in the asylum and had been bringing your food. A nurse comes in and takes your blood pressure, checks your pulse, and draws some blood. She's taking you to another room for treatment... We've jumped in time again. You're back in the same windowless room. Nick just brought your food again. You beg him to take you outside like he used to. You tell him you really will go crazy if you have to keep staring at these walls. He seems to consider it and tells you he'll see what he can do; it's not as simple to get you out when there's no window. He leaves, and you go to sleep. You wake up and Nick is there in his uniform with a wheelchair. You excitedly hop into the wheelchair. He frowns and tells you that you look too happy...he suggests you pretend to be asleep, so you close your eyes and let your head loll to one side. A few minutes later you feel fresh air and open your eyes. You seem to be on the asylum grounds. There are a few other patients here and there. It's springtime; it seems you've been in the asylum for close to a year. Maybe even multiple years, since I have no way of determining how much of your memory was erased. Are you sure you were changed in 1920?"

"Yes, my first memories are from the summer of 1920," Alice told him. "What year did I enter the asylum?"

"Well, I was assuming 1920 earlier," Eli responded, "but that was because Edward had told me you were changed that year. To be honest, I wasn't paying any attention to dates when I did the first scan. I guess I depend too much on my ability to determine time based on the size of the index. Your memory had gaps that weren't discernable from the index. I guess everything I told you was off by a year."

"Edward, you didn't notice any dates at all in the previous scan?" Alice asked. "What about the letters from Nick? Weren't they dated?"

"I only see what Eli sees," Edward explained. "He had to really concentrate to read the letters. Human memories aren't as sharp as ours, and the parts you remembered from the letter when you were still human were the parts that were most vivid in the memories that Eli scanned. He never tried to concentrate on the dates of the letters, and I suspect you didn't pay much attention to the date when you read them. You knew they were recent and you just started reading the body of the letters. He just scanned the last letter again while I was talking. The date is not very sharp in your memory, but it does look like July of 1919. We can't quite make out the day of the month."

Alice looked thoughtful. "My tombstone and obituary said I died on July 21, 1919, and that was also the date on my admissions records. But the newspaper that contained the obituary was from August of 1920. I always thought that was odd. I had assumed they considered me dead when they placed me in the asylum, and didn't bother sending the obituary for publication until a year later, maybe when they were told I was missing, or had died, or whatever they were told. When Eli told me a few weeks ago that I only had about two weeks of negative memories at the end of my life, I thought I must not have entered the asylum until 1920. And perhaps the cemetery stone, obituary, and admissions records were all done by the vampire who was covering his tracks when James was after me, and he got the year wrong."

"Why would he have gotten the year wrong?" I asked.

"Not all of our kind pay attention to things like human dates, Bella." Carlisle explained."We do, because we live among humans, but those who consider humans to be nothing more than a source of nourishment might not keep up with something as trivial as what year it is. He could have just copied a date from another person's admissions record, and then used the same date on the cemetery stone and the obituary."

I nodded. That would also explain why the obituary was published in 1920. But based on what we knew now, the date on the admissions record was probably accurate. But why hadn't her parents come back to visit her? The theory that her parents considered her dead didn't fit with what we had learned about her loving childhood or how her mother had seemed to be having second thoughts about leaving her there. Alice really needed to visit her niece - maybe she could get some more concrete answers that way. But if her admissions record was accurate...

"So why do you think the doctor in the hospital thought you were someone else, if the admissions record you found was accurate?" I asked. "That would seem to indicate that it wasn't forged, and had been there all along."

Alice shrugged. "Maybe someone was trying to make me look crazy? Like Nick?"

"Nick could have altered the names on the chart the doctor was referencing, and he could have placed a different name plate outside your door," Edward said. "My guess is that he also hid your real admissions record and changed your identity so that your parents couldn't find you if they went back to the asylum asking about you. It seems Nick wanted to keep you there for some reason."

"The record was filed properly when I filched it," Alice told him. "It was in the archives under 'Brandon', filed between 'Boggs' and 'Branger'."

Edward just shrugged.

"So you're outside on the asylum grounds," Eli continued. "Nick pushes you in your wheelchair so that you're both hidden behind some bushes, you climb on his back, and he takes off with you. You're so happy to be outside you don't mind the speed anymore. He stops in the same clearing as before. You jump up and run around for a bit, enjoying the freedom and the fresh air."

"Jasper," Edward interrupted, apparently in response to his thoughts, "I assure you she wasn't having any romantic feelings toward Nick. The fact that she was riding on his back doesn't mean – "

"It's not that," Jasper insisted. "It's just that I remember how _you_ felt after running with Bella that way. You were absolutely giddy with pleasure of sharing with her something that you enjoyed so much. I just don't like the idea of this Nick character experiencing that type of pleasure with her. I understand she didn't return his feelings even if he had any, and I understand that even if she did, she doesn't remember it and it doesn't mean anything. But that doesn't mean I'm going to like it."

"From what I'm seeing, it was just the most expedient means of transportation," Edward told him. "He didn't seem to be doing it for the fun of it."

"That's fine," Jasper replied. "I appreciate what you're trying to do, Edward, but please just ignore my thoughts of displeasure. I'm sure there will be a lot more I don't like. We're interrupting Eli, and Alice here is feeling a bit impatient."

Edward gave him a single nod, and looked back to Eli, seeming to signal him to continue.

Eli focused on Alice again, and for a moment he looked confused. "We seem to have jumped ahead again. You're still in the clearing but I think it's summer now. The trees and grass are a darker green, the grass is taller, and you're standing in a different spot in the same clearing. Nick looks upset. You've never seen him look angry before and it scares you. You ask him what's wrong, and he tells you someone has been there - someone like him. He called you by your name, which means a lot to you since he's the only one who still calls you 'Alice.' He doesn't seem angry with _you_, and you relax a little. You hesitantly ask him what that means, and he just tells you not to worry, that he will protect you. He says he needs to get you back to the asylum. You want to protest that you've only been outside for a couple minutes, but you can tell that he is serious and that he believes remaining there would be dangerous. Suddenly, you realize you're about to have company."

"Another premonition?" Alice asked.

"Yes, not a vision, but just a feeling you had. You just suddenly knew someone was coming. You start to tell Nick, who has turned his back to you so that you can climb on... and from behind Nick's shoulders you see James flash into the clearing. He seems to be alone. You immediately notice the pale skin and red eyes, marking him as one like Nick, but that's where the resemblance ends. James is not nearly as attractive, and from the sneer on his face you quickly discern that he is not as friendly.

"'What have we here?' James asked. Eli imitated James's voice perfectly as he quoted him, and it made my skin crawl. I hadn't thought I would ever hear that voice again.

Eli continued, imitating each voice as he relayed the conversation. "'She's mine,' Nick declared. He's holding his hands out protectively to keep you behind him.

"'You're keeping her as a pet?' he sneered, moving to get a better look at you. 'You've been here with her before.'

"'Yes. She's mine. I'm saving her for later.'

"'Alice, is it?' James spoke directly to you, and you felt a chill go down your spine. He inhaled deeply and murmured, 'Delectable.' He turned to Nick and introduced himself. 'Forgive me, I'm James. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I don't suppose you'd care to share your snack?'

"Suddenly you hear another voice - a female voice - from further off in the woods, shouting, 'James! I want that one! Save it for me!' You thought the voice sounded somewhat childish, and James was clearly annoyed to be hearing it."

I was fairly certain I recognized that voice, but I didn't want to interrupt Eli. I silently asked Edward, and he nodded and squeezed my shoulder.

"James muttered something," Eli continued, "but all you could make out was 'newborn' and 'trouble' and then he disappeared back into the woods as suddenly as he had arrived.

"Nick throws you onto his back and takes off with you just as you hear a thunderous crash deep in the woods. He takes you back to the asylum, retrieving your wheelchair from behind the bushes, and wheels you into the records office. You watch in horror as he snaps the neck of the lady at the desk. She didn't even have time to scream. You remain in the wheelchair, afraid to move, as he shuffles some papers around in some folders and re-files them.

"He takes you back outside, has you climb onto his back again, and he goes off into a different part of the woods, stopping occasionally to tell you to touch a tree or a flower. Terrified, you do as he asks. You're realizing how little you really knew about him, and you wonder if he's going to kill you the same way he killed the records lady. He turns suddenly and takes you back to the asylum grounds, then heads off in yet another direction. You travel for some time, and he finally stops at what appears to be an abandoned house in the forest. He takes you in through the second story window and you realize you're in a bedroom. He tells you to lie down and rest, that he will protect you.

"You lie down, not quite sure what to think. You hear Nick pull the door shut behind him as he leaves, followed by what sounds like a key turning in the doorknob. . You realize you've been locked in the room. You are simultaneously relieved to be away from Nick and terrified that he will leave you here alone. You lie there for several minutes. You don't hear Nick and you start to wonder if he's still in the house. You listen to the sounds of the forest, trying to calm yourself. You hear a door open and close, and then it's quiet again.

"An unfamiliar voice from somewhere in the house cuts through the silence. 'James? I've heard of him. He's a tracker.' There was a short pause, and then the same voice said, even more loudly, 'It doesn't matter what she hears.'"

I could tell from Eli's rendition of the voice that it was soft, deep, and melodic. It seemed somehow familiar to me, and yet I was absolutely certain it didn't match any voice I had ever heard before; my perfect recall assured me of that.

"'She won't be living much longer anyway,' a second unfamiliar voice added."

Eli used almost the same feathery voice to imitate the sound of the second vampire's speech. The voice was soft and subdued, but obviously loud enough to be easily heard by Alice's human ears.

Eli continued narrating Alice's memories. "You know they're talking about you, and even though you've known for a while that you wouldn't live much longer, it's still a bit shocking to realize that this day is likely your last. You're thinking of your family, missing them, and wondering why they never visited or came back for you.

"Then you hear Nick's familiar voice arguing with them: 'We'll just have to speed up the plans...make her safe.' You feel relieved to know he is still there and seems to want to protect you, but you're also terrified because you've known for some time now that you are going to end up like him and you're not quite sure how that's going to come about.

"The first voice said, 'You've become too attached; you're putting us all in unnecessary danger.'

"You hear the second voice again. 'We should leave this one for the tracker and find another.'

"Nick seems to be arguing with them but he's speaking too quickly for your human mind to process it - I can't make it out. The others are speaking more quickly too. You're straining to hear but you're only catching a few words here and there as they slow down or increase their volume. You hear Nick say, 'newborn who escaped.' You're wondering what that meant and you're imagining a human infant being kidnapped...or rescued. You can't make any sense of it in the context of the conversation.

"The first voice asked, 'Did you cover your tracks?'

"Nick's reply was spoken too quickly for you to understand.

"The first voice spoke again. 'Of course not! We're all much safer with those two on our trail.' He was sounding increasingly angry, and the sarcastic words were punctuated by a loud crash in the other room.

"The second voice was calmer but took on a tone of authority. 'She's become a liability. You have to let her go.'

"Nick's reply was again spoken too quickly for your human mind to process. You're wondering what he doesn't want you to hear.

"The first voice again: 'There will be others who are special.'

"The second voice: 'They could be working for _them_ now. They could be... ' He continued but you couldn't catch the rest.

"You were surprised to be able understand Nick's answer this time, and you were surprised by the conviction with which he spoke. 'I'm not leaving her. I'm going to change her _now_. Even if James finds her, he won't be able to get what he wants. She'll be safe, and you'll see how valuable she is.'

"You realize he was wanting you to hear this; this was intended to comfort you, but your premonition of yourself with red eyes solidified, and you realized he was going to make you like him - it was both imminent and inevitable. You began screaming involuntarily.

"There was a loud ruckus in the other room and it distracted you from your screaming fit. It sounded to you like boulders colliding. I think the two must have been fighting with Nick, trying to stop him from changing you. You could hear furniture breaking, and the house shook as if there was an earthquake. You screamed again as you heard something crash into the door to your room, and you saw a crack appear in the solid wood door.

"The house suddenly became silent; you could hear birds chirping outside your window. You strained to hear something, anything, from the other room. Had they left you?

"You hear the first voice again, speaking more calmly this time: 'You will do damage control first. If James finds the yearlings - they can't know of our involvement. Even if he's still on his own right now, he could be recruited in the future.'

"The second voice added, 'We're leaving. You'll be on your own with the tracker if you insist on staying with the girl.'

"'Fine.' Nick answered. 'I'll get rid of him and meet with the yearlings tomorrow as planned. I can take care of them then.'

"The first voice again: 'No. You will take care of them _now_. He could discover them before tomorrow.'

"Then the second voice: 'You will come with us and remove evidence of our involvement. She'll be fine for five minutes.'

"You hear a exasperated sigh. You think it was probably Nick. You keep listening, but you don't hear anything else. You wonder if they're leaving and listen for a door to open, but there are no sounds in the house. You want to go look out the window but you're too scared to move. You're pretty sure they're gone. You briefly consider trying to escape, but you have no idea where you are, and you know the one called James is out there hunting for you, and Nick would not be pleased if you were gone when he returned. And you know that he would somehow find you, regardless. The image of yourself with red eyes is still strong. You begin sobbing and wish you could wake up from this nightmare.

"Suddenly, you have the feeling you're being watched. You open one eye and see that Nick is standing in the middle of the room looking at you. He approaches you slowly, assuring you that you're going to be safe, and says he wants to talk to you. He takes your hands and pulls you to a sitting position, and then pulls a chair over from a desk and sits down facing you.

"You're staring at the floor, waiting for him to speak. You glance up at him, and you realize that for the first time since you've known him he seems uncertain about what to say to you.

"You decided to state the obvious: 'You're going to make me like you now, aren't you?'

"'Yes, the time has come,' he answered. 'But there are some things I want you to understand first. Perhaps it will make the transition easier for you. You already know more than the others did, anyway.'

"You weren't sure if he was still speaking to you or if he had started talking to himself. There were so many questions in your mind, but you asked, 'What others?'

"'That's not important right now,' he told you. 'We may not have much time. I need to prepare you for what's going to happen. Do you know what I am? What you're about to become?'

"You shook your head. You didn't have a name for what he was. You just knew that he had red eyes, that he was fast and strong, and that he could jump from great heights while holding you without hurting either of you.

"He took your hand as if to reassure you. 'Alice, I'm a vampire. Do you know what that is?'

"You gasped as you remembered overhearing some classmates in school talking about a novel they had read. 'Like Dracula?' you managed to choke out.

"Nick chuckled. 'Somewhat. Mr. Stoker didn't get many of the details right, but that's the basic idea.'

"You're struggling to remember what it was that you overheard being discussed about that book. 'You drink blood?' you asked him.

"'Yes.' He's staring at you, waiting for a reaction.

"'But you've never hurt me,' you tell him. You have the feeling that may be about to change, but you're confused as to why he spent so much time with you without harming you.

"'No. You are too special to become anyone's lunch.'

"'That's what James wants? He wants me for lunch?' You remembered the word he used to describe how you smelled – 'delectable'.

"'You don't need to worry about him. He will lose interest when he finds he can't have your blood.'

"'Because you're going to make me like you?'

"'That's right. You won't smell so appealing to him anymore, and you'll be stronger than him, too.'

"'How are you going to do that? You're going to force me to drink your blood?' The thought made you feel sick; you were certain you would throw up if you had to drink blood. That had to be the most disgusting part of what you had heard your classmates talking about.

"Nick chuckled again. 'He got that part backwards. It's the other way around, actually. I have to bite you without draining you. Not as easy as it sounds, but don't worry, I've done it before. I won't take too much. And I won't lie to you; the transformation is quite painful. But when you awaken, you will be strong and immortal. And James will not be able to have you for lunch.'

"You're not finding any of this information very comforting. You're thinking that maybe you would be better off if Nick would listen to his friends and just let James finish you off. You didn't want to be like Nick, but you knew it was going to happen anyway. You started sobbing again. 'I don't want to drink blood! I don't want to hurt people! What will happen if I refuse? Will I starve to death?'

"'Oh, you'll want blood,' he assured you, smiling. 'But you don't have to kill humans. You can drink from animals instead.'

"'Is that what you do?' you asked. 'You survive on animals?'

"He shook his head. 'I've never tried it, but I've heard it can be done. Animals don't smell as good…but you may like them. I want you to try to remember, when you awaken, that you don't want to hurt humans, okay? That may help. Your human memories will fade, but you can concentrate on remembering what is important to you.'

"You can hardly believe that this is really happening. You're sitting here having a conversation with a vampire who has said he is going to bite you; you're about to become a vampire. You're still not completely sure what that means, and you feel like you're running out of time to ask questions. You want to trust Nick; he has been your only friend since you were left at the asylum – he's been the only one who still listened to you. But he said it would be painful, and you would want to drink blood. This is not something you want. You think back to the woman you saw him kill a few hours earlier – how can you trust someone who just committed murder, someone who just admitted to drinking human blood when he knew he could survive on animals? You feel confused and hopeless. You start crying harder and more hysterically.

"'There, there, Alice. Everything's going to be okay. I'm going to take care of you.'

"'But you… You killed that woman. I saw you kill her. Why? Why did you do that? Are you going to go back and drink her blood?'

"Nick laughed. 'No, I'm not going back for her. Cold blood is revolting. I'm sorry you had to witness that, though. I didn't want you to be frightened, but I had to adjust some records and I couldn't have any witnesses. I made sure her death was quick and painless; I was quite merciful, really. She would have died eventually anyway. But you don't need to be concerned about that. I have to change you before our unwanted company arrives. I tried to leave things so that he would think I was still keeping you in the asylum, but I'm not sure how much time that will buy us. Is there anything else you wanted to ask before we begin?'

"You shook your head. 'I just don't think I want this. Can't you just kill me instead?'

"'No. Alice, I've told you, you're too special. Everything's going to be okay, my dear. I'll stay here with you through your transformation, and I'll help guide you when you awaken. I'll teach you how to sustain yourself, how to protect yourself. Once you're fully trained you may go off on your own, and you'll be free do to whatever you want.'

"Your panic level is escalating even further. 'You're going to leave me then?' you asked. As scared as you were of Nick, the idea that he might abandon you after you became like him scared you even more.

"'Not until you're ready. I promise,' he assured you. 'Eventually, you'll meet others like you, others who share your respect for humanity. You won't want to stay with me.'

"He spoke with such confidence that suddenly you wondered if he had some odd ability to know the future like you did. 'Can you see the future?' you asked him.

"'Not like you,' he answered, smiling. 'But I can still shape it.'

"It was the first time he had spoken to you of your unusual ability. You wondered how he knew. You felt a sharp sting of pain at your neck, and realized Nick had started the process. He had moved too quickly for you to see, and he now had his mouth at your neck. You had expected it to hurt more. You start to think that maybe it wouldn't be too bad; the shock treatments you received a couple of nights prior had been worse than this. Then the burning started. You resolved not to scream. Whenever you had screamed when you were shocked, the next shock would be worse; maybe this would be the same – screaming might make it worse. You tried to focus on Nick. He had moved to your ankle, and you could feel the burning beginning in your wrists and ankles. The burning is spreading. You can't focus on Nick any longer because you've closed your eyes and you're not sure where he is. You listen to the sounds outside in the forest, trying to focus on anything but the pain. The next fifty hours appear to be more of the same…I'm going to skip ahead…

"You hear voices and realize James has arrived. You strain to listen through the fog of the agonizing pain, and you hear James say, 'Well, well. You're a little sharper than I gave you credit for. Very odd, though, how she lies there so quietly. The poor thing doesn't seem to mind the pain. Such a waste… She did smell so delicious…'

"You hear Nick respond, 'I told you, she's mine. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there's nothing here for you. You might have better luck back at the asylum.'

"'Ah, but this one's special, isn't she?' You could hear James's voice moving as he walked around you, and you felt something brush against your cheek. 'She is to be your mate?'

"'My plans for her are not your concern.'

"James laughed, sounding amused. 'No, I'm not too concerned about your plans. My prey may have escaped me for once - but not without a price.'

"You heard a loud crash, followed by growls and hisses and some more crashes. Then you had a series of visions. Your eyes were still closed, but you saw the fight play out clearly in your mind. You 'watched' as James attacked Nick, and Nick struggled to retaliate. You could see yourself lying motionless on a bed in the background. Nick lost an arm, and then the other arm. He had made a valiant effort, but he was no match for James. As you heard the sounds of the second limb being torn off and Nick's agonizing scream of pain, you had a vision of Nick staring at you with such intensity that you wondered if he was trying to bore a hole through you with his gaze. Then you saw James lunging at him from behind. The vision ended and you heard a horrible screeching sound. And that's the end of the memories associated with your human index."

* * *

**A/N: What do you think Nick was up to? Who were the others Alice heard speaking? Why was Nick staring at Alice so intently there at the end? What did you think of Alice's last human days? I'd love to hear your thoughts. :)**


	27. Family

Chapter 27: Family

"Oh, Alice!" Esme said softly, looking pained. She had walked over to Alice when Eli had begun describing Alice's transformation, and Alice now hopped down from Jasper's lap and reached out to accept the hug that was about to be offered. "I'm so sorry you had to go through all of that!" Esme continued. "Oh, the things you endured in that place… To be afraid that screaming would increase the pain…" She shook her head sadly.

"Esme, it's okay — I don't remember any of it!" Alice tried to reassure her. "It was like hearing a story about someone else. It's like that wasn't me. I mean…I know it was me, but knowing about it doesn't make me feel sad. If those things hadn't happened, I wouldn't have found Jasper, and I wouldn't be a part of this family. I love my life! Really, you don't need to feel sorry for me."

"I know, but I still hate that you had to go through that," Esme said, smoothing Alice's hair. "To think of you all alone in that asylum when there was nothing wrong with your mind... You must have been so frightened." She released her from the hug and looked at her solemnly. "I'm really glad you don't truly remember it."

"Me too," Alice agreed. "I'm glad I've learned what happened, but it's nice that I don't remember actually experiencing any of it. I feel sort of detached from it, so it doesn't bother me."

Esme took a small step back and rubbed Alice's shoulder before turning and heading back to her seat next to Carlisle.

"I'm still not sure why I lost my memory, though," Alice mused, leaning back into Jasper's embrace. "It sounded like James finished killing Nick before my transformation was complete. How could Nick have removed the memory of my transformation if he was a pile of ashes?" Alice glanced around at each of us.

"What about the way he was looking at you at the end?" Carlisle asked. "Eli said he was staring intently at you."

"I didn't care for that, either," Jasper grumbled. "Why would he stop to look at her like that while he was losing a fight? He resisted his instincts of self-protection just to get another look at her. Alice, I think he cared more about you than you realized — he wanted you for his mate."

"Jasper, what I meant to say was that maybe he was removing memories then," Carlisle explained. "Perhaps he needed visual contact, as Jane does."

"I think Carlisle's right," Eli said. "It really looked like he was trying to do something, like he was willing something to happen."

"It didn't look like a lover's last gaze," Edward assured Jasper.

"I guess it does make sense that he could have been erasing her memory," Jasper reluctantly agreed. "I wonder what could have been so important that he would stop defending himself against James to make sure it got erased."

"What about my memory of the shock treatments?" Alice asked. "Eli, you said I was remembering that when the burning started, but you hadn't mentioned me remembering it before. Wouldn't that mean that he erased those memories after the burning started? Maybe he didn't want me to remember the most painful parts of my human life?"

Eli shrugged. "It's possible, I guess. Or he could have erased those memories while you were burning, before James came. We don't really know what Nick was doing during those fifty hours."

"But why would that have been so important for him to erase?" Jasper asked. "Why would he give up his life just so that you wouldn't have any dim human memories of shock treatments? Those memories would have faded once you were a vampire, anyway."

"I think he already knew he had lost the fight," Edward told him. "From the visions Alice was having, Nick didn't have much of a chance against James. He had vastly underestimated him, and I doubt he ever expected it to come to a fight. Maybe there was something he wanted to erase from her memory once he realized he wasn't going to be around to guide her when she awoke."

"That would make sense," Jasper agreed, nodding. "Those two vampires who were arguing with Nick in the other room seemed very concerned about anyone learning of their involvement in whatever they were doing. Maybe he was erasing Alice's memories of his own involvement in whatever that was. Or maybe he was erasing her memories of his two friends, although I'm not sure why he would leave her memory of their conversation right before she was changed."

"Maybe he didn't get finished," Carlisle suggested. "Was he still staring at her when he was killed?"

"He was still staring like that when James lunged at him," Eli answered. "But that was the last vision. Nick's head was still attached to his body at that point, but James had a clear shot at his neck, and that screeching noise could only have been one thing. I think it's safe to assume he was still staring when he lost his head. He would probably have been in so much pain at that point that he wouldn't have been able to focus enough to continue erasing memories, if that's what he was doing. And I doubt James wasted any time getting the fire started."

"So maybe something happened at the point when James interrupted his memory manipulation," Carlisle continued. "That must have been when he did whatever he did to cut off her human memory index. Perhaps he realized he didn't have time to be selective in what he removed, so he decided to cut off _all_ of her human memories."

"But Alice remembered the sound of his head being removed, so it seems that the index was cut off at the instant that the decapitation was completed," Jasper mused. "I wonder if cutting off the index was even intentional — like Eli just said, I don't think he would have been able to focus at that point. Maybe he was still trying to selectively remove memories when he was killed, and since the process wasn't completed, her index was left in an unnatural state. Then when the transformation completed she started over with a fresh, new index since the old one was unusable."

Eli nodded. "Yes, I was just thinking of the same analogy."

"Which was?" I asked.

"They were thinking of how in programming, when you open a file to read or write to it, you need to close it afterward," Edward explained. "Nick left Alice's memory file open at his death and there was no one to close it. The transformation apparently started a new file instead of adding to the old one because the old one was inaccessible."

"Oh," I said. We hadn't covered that in my computer class yet, but I could kind of see what he was saying.

"So we still don't know _why_ he removed whatever he did," Alice said. "I wonder why he removed the memories of the shock treatments. He had apparently been removing those all along, since we didn't come across any mention of memories of that until my transformation started. Maybe he didn't want me to have painful memories? Maybe he was afraid I would hold it against him if I remembered the pain he had caused me by keeping me in the asylum?"

"He really seemed to care for your well-being and comfort," Eli answered. "I think it's possible that he might have removed those memories just to spare you the pain, but I suspect there was more that he was removing as well."

"Were there any memory gaps during those fifty hours?" Jasper asked. "It seems like he would want to spare her the pain of the transformation itself, if he cared at all about sparing her pain."

"Not that I could tell," Eli said, "but I'm not sure I would be able to detect gaps during the transformation if the pain level was the same before and after the gap."

"So you're suggesting that more than fifty hours could have elapsed?" Carlisle asked Jasper. "You're thinking that she may have been closer to awakening than we suspected?"

"Yes, that's what I was thinking, but I'm not sure how much sense it makes," Jasper answered. "Why would he have only cut out a day or so? Why not erase all of it? Unless he just wasn't finished… But I think Eli's right — I think he must have been protecting some secret. Maybe he wanted to erase the conversation he'd just had with his two friends, but didn't get finished?"

"His friends mentioned something about yearlings," Esme said. "Do you think that referred to Cora and the others he had created? Nick was supposed to meet with them the next day, and he apparently went with the other two to remove some of their memories before he returned to start the transformation."

"Yes, I think they must have been referring to Cora, Fernando, and Jesse," Eli said. "I wasn't aware of them having any gaps in their memories, but if they'd had selected memories completely removed like Alice did, I wouldn't have been able to tell it from the index. And I haven't scanned enough of their memories that I would have noticed that type of gap. We'll have to see what Cora has to say when she visits. "

"Who's Cora?" I heard Emmett's voice ask, just before I heard the front door open and he appeared in the family room. "Did I miss anything good?" He grinned, and then seemed to notice that several of us were watching for Rosalie to follow him in. "Rosalie wanted some time alone. She said she'd be home in plenty of time for her Monday classes. So what did I miss? Why are you all looking at me like that?"

"Eli just finished scanning the rest of Alice's human memories," Carlisle explained.

"Really? So you found out what happened to you?" Emmett looked at Alice expectantly.

"Sort of," Alice answered. "The pen pal I corresponded with during my teenage years turned out to be a vampire. When he decided to visit, I started having premonitions of myself with red eyes, and that's how I ended up in the asylum. It seems I was there for about a year, even though there were only about two weeks' worth of memories — it seems Nick's talent included the ability to remove people's memories. He visited me there at the asylum, and then when James was after me he took me to a house in the woods. There were two other vampires there — they were plotting something, but we're not sure what. I never saw them; I just heard their voices because they were in another room. They left, and Nick started my transformation before James could find me. When my transformation was nearly complete, James showed up and killed Nick, and that's where my human memories ended."

"Well, I guess I did miss the good stuff. So who's Cora?" Emmett asked again.

"She's the one who created me," Eli answered. "And Nick created her and at least three others, apparently a year or so before Alice's transformation."

"Wait." Emmett's brow furrowed. "Let me get this straight. The vampire who James said worked at the asylum was named Nick. And Nick created Cora, who created you?"

"That's right," Eli replied.

"So he was like your grandfather!" Emmett's booming laughter reverberated throughout the house. "Alice and Cora are like sisters! That makes you Alice's nephew!" Emmett clapped Eli on the shoulder.

Alice and Eli looked at one another. There was some truth to Emmett's statements — it seemed they were biologically connected by Nick's venom. I wouldn't take the analogy to human relationships too far, though; Edward was most certainly not my father, and I didn't need to be a mind reader to know that Emmett had never had any sisterly thoughts toward Rosalie.

"Should I call you Auntie Alice?" Eli grinned, rubbing his shoulder.

Alice just winked in response.

"There's still one thing I don't understand," Esme said. "Nick seemed to know about your talent, Alice, but you hadn't told him about that. How do you think he knew?"

Alice looked thoughtful. "Maybe I told him at some point and he erased those memories. I must have mentioned it in one of the pen pal letters, and he later conveniently removed that from my memory."

"He could have known even without you ever telling him," Eli suggested. "There was a newspaper article which mentioned your involvement in getting your father's factory to shut down before the flood hit — he could have read it there."

"Why would he have bothered reading a Biloxi newspaper?" Alice wondered.

"Cora found me from a newspaper article," Eli said, shrugging. "And why did she read bother reading human news? She wanted to create a talented vampire, someone who could read her thoughts and desires. Cora has never tried to live among humans as we do, so the newspaper provided a way for her to conduct her search from a distance, without involving herself in human affairs. She had been looking through newspapers for months, in all the towns she passed through, until she finally selected me as her victim. I think you were probably selected for your talent as well; that may be what he meant when he kept saying you were 'special.'"

"That makes a lot of sense," Jasper agreed. "We know Nick created at least four vampires, probably five, and at least three of them are talented."

"But Biloxi is a rather small town," Alice argued, leaning forward slightly and turning her head to look up at Jasper. "Wouldn't it have been easier for him to check newspapers from larger cities? Why Biloxi?"

Jasper smiled at her logic. "That might be the easiest way to _find _talent, but there would also be more humans who knew about that person. If several people featured in major newspapers were to all disappear within a year of one another, it would look mighty suspicious. But if he took people from small towns in different parts of the country, no one would ever notice a pattern."

Alice nodded and leaned back against Jasper again, and he wrapped his arms around her. Everyone was quiet for a brief moment, and I thought about what Jasper and Eli were saying. That would mean that Nick and possibly his two friends had been traveling the country searching for humans they thought would make talented vampires. What were Nick and his two friends planning? What had he intended to do with Alice and the others?

"Nick was also in Chicago," Edward pointed out. "We know he had been to the hospital where Carlisle worked just days or weeks before Carlisle found me there. Was he looking for talented humans there too? Obviously, Chicago isn't a small town, but with the epidemic going on, disappearances wouldn't raise much suspicion."

"Good thing Carlisle found you first," Emmett said, shaking with laughter.

I didn't find the idea so funny that if a few minor circumstances had been different, Edward might have been changed by Nick instead of by Carlisle. How different would our lives be if that had happened? Edward would have been taught to feed from humans and would have become a pawn in whatever sinister plan Nick and his buddies had been scheming about. I pushed the disturbing thoughts from my mind.

"I'm not so sure he was looking for humans in Chicago," Eli said. "At least, I don't think he found any there. I know Cora was changed in 1919, and Jesse and Fernando were changed after she was, so it wasn't any of them, and if there had been others I'm fairly certain I would have heard about them in Cora's thoughts at some point."

"It's possible that Nick found one or more humans in Chicago that he tried to change, and they either didn't survive or left before Cora was created," Jasper speculated. "It's unlikely that his first attempts were successful; he may have drained a few by accident. Or perhaps he destroyed the first newborns because they did not turn out to be talented or because their talent was different from what he had anticipated. Maria routinely disposed of newborns who didn't measure up to her expectations."

"But what do you think he was trying to _do_?" Alice asked. "What was he planning if he wasn't creating an army of newborns?"

"What about that remark Nick made right before he bit you, about shaping the future?" I asked Alice, and then glanced around at the others in the room. "What could that have meant?"

"Maybe he thought he could use Alice's ability to learn what was going to happen in the future and then try to change it?" Emmett offered.

"But he told her that she would eventually meet others who shared her respect for humanity," I pointed out. "How could he have known that?"

"Maybe his talent was more complex than the ability to remove memories," Carlisle suggested. "Perhaps he could alter a person's memories, or even affect future decisions."

"He didn't seem to have any effect on James' decisions," Emmett observed. "If he could control the future, why is he dead?"

"Em makes a good point," Jasper said. "He also told Alice that he would be there to guide her when she awoke. And he was obviously wrong about that."

"I still don't see why he didn't try to use his talent against James," Emmett said. "Even if all he could do was erase memories, why didn't he just erase James' memories and make him forget that he wanted to kill him?"

"James seemed to catch him off guard," Edward explained. "He wasn't expecting a fight and he underestimated James' skill. The fight didn't last long, and if Nick needed visual contact to erase memories he didn't have much of an opportunity for that with James. I think he must have decided that it was more important to erase something Alice knew than to try to save himself and possibly fail, leaving Alice with too much knowledge."

"What about what Nick said right before he told me he could shape the future?" Alice asked. "He said, 'Eventually, you'll meet others like you, others who share your respect for humanity. You won't want to stay with me.' He was right about that! Everyone in this room right now shares my respect for human life. But how could he have known I was going to meet you?"

I noticed Edward and Eli exchanging a glance.

"What?" I demanded, looking up at Edward. He knew how much those silent conversations annoyed me.

"Eli and I don't think he was referring to our family," he admitted. "He overheard something in Cora's thoughts that didn't make sense to him at the time, but it seems like Cora might have some more pieces to this puzzle."

"So what did you hear?" I asked Eli, raising an eyebrow as I turned slightly to look at him. Based on his expression, I suspected Edward had already said more than Eli wanted him to.

"Cora wants to tell her story herself," Eli said, looking slightly uncomfortable. "I'm not trying to be difficult, Bella, but she would be angry if she knew I had listened as much as I did. I realized she was thinking of things she wasn't ready to share with me yet, and I stopped listening before she finished the thought. But she'll be here next weekend and I think she will share more with us then. She wouldn't come here, knowing Edward's ability, if she wasn't planning to share what she knows with us."

"Regardless of whether he meant this family or some other group, he was still right," Alice insisted. "I had visions that led me to this lifestyle even though I had no memory of being human. I had no reason to value human life except for what I learned through my visions. And what is it that seems to trigger my visions?"

I looked at Alice, beginning to realize what she was getting at. "Do you think the decision you made before your transformation, that you didn't want to kill humans, could have carried over after your change? Even though you lost all of your human memories?"

"I don't know." Alice looked thoughtful. "When I awoke, I didn't remember _anything_. Well, I somehow remembered my name was Alice, and I could still speak English and could recognize common objects, but I didn't remember anything from my past. I had no idea how I came to be where I was. My strength surprised me, but I had no idea that it was because I used to be human. When I had visions of my future family and of hunting animals, I decided that was how I wanted to live. But my visions usually seem to be triggered by a decision someone made. Maybe the visions _were _because I had already decided I didn't want to hunt humans."

"But how could you be influenced by a decision you didn't remember making?" I asked. "The decision wouldn't have been in effect any longer if you had forgotten it, would it? Your visions change when people's decisions change, right?"

"Right…" Alice looked perplexed. "But I never reversed the decision, so maybe it still carried over somehow?"

"Or maybe it was someone else's decision," Edward suggested. "Nick apparently had some plans for you, and for some reason those plans seemed to involve keeping you from human blood."

"But Nick was killed," I pointed out, confused at Edward's train of thought. "So if Alice's decision was cancelled when she forgot about it, wouldn't his have been cancelled as well when he was killed?"

"But James didn't kill Nick's two friends," he reminded me. "They seemed to be in on whatever Nick had planned. They may have decided to help his plan along, and that triggered Alice's visions."

"Sorry, bro, that doesn't make any sense," Emmett argued. "If Nick's friends planned for Alice to end up with some other group of vampires, why would their decisions have caused her to have visions of _us_? And if they were somehow planning for her to meet up with us, that doesn't make any sense either. We've never met those two; they wouldn't have even known about us."

"And why would they have intentionally created a vampire with such a powerful talent and then sent her to us?" Jasper asked. "It doesn't make any sense. And she had visions of me too; why would they have wanted her with me?"

Edward sighed, sounding a bit exasperated. "They may not have _planned_ for her to end up with us, but they could still have made a decision that would have had that end result. People make decisions all the time that result in something completely different than what they are trying to accomplish. And even if the two friends did make a decision that influenced Alice's diet, it doesn't necessarily mean that they were also the ones whose decision caused her to have a vision of you, Jasper. We have no idea if the visions had the same trigger."

"We may never fully understand how Alice's talent works," Carlisle said gently, obviously trying to avoid an all-out argument. "Any of those theories could be valid, or perhaps there's another answer we haven't thought of yet."

"I'd like to think it was my own decision," Alice said. "Maybe it was just an inherent part of my personality that I didn't want to kill people, and it carried over with the transformation?"

"Like your love for fashion?" Eli asked.

Alice smiled. "Exactly."

Personally, I thought Edward's theory made the most sense, but Carlisle was right: we didn't always understand how Alice's gift worked, and it certainly wasn't worth arguing about. If Alice wanted to think she brought about her own visions, I wasn't going to rain on her parade.

"So, when are we going, Bella?" Alice looked at me eagerly.

"Go where?" I asked in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"To visit my niece, of course! You decided to go with me, right?"

"Oh, yes, I was going to ask if you'd like me to go with you. I really think you need to visit her. Maybe she can help with some more pieces of the puzzle, like why your family didn't come back for you. It seemed obvious that they loved you; I think something must have happened that prevented them from visiting."

"Your finals will be over on December the seventh, right? Let's plan to go that weekend," Alice decided.

"Sure, that sounds great."

"Thank you so much, Bella!" Alice danced over to me and pulled me into a tight hug.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that if I had not decided to suggest that I accompany her, she probably would still be planning the same trip, but with Jasper. "Are you sure you want _me_ to go with you?" I asked as she released me from the hug. "If you'd rather go with Jasper —"

"Don't be silly, Bella!" Alice protested, giving me a stern look. "This is the way I saw it. I have a good feeling about this trip."

I looked over at Jasper but he was just smiling and shaking his head. "You go with her, Bella," he insisted. "Alice misses spending time with you. You girls enjoy your trip. I'm sure I can find something to do with the guys."

"It's been a while since we had a hunting trip with just the guys," Emmett suggested.

"I've been promising Eli an extended hunting trip so he can try something better than moose," Edward said. "Any objection to his joining us?"

"No, we'd love to have Eli along," Carlisle answered, giving Eli a warm smile.

The guys continued planning their trip, deciding to head into Canada with the possibility of going far enough north to find polar bear. I felt better knowing that the guys had a fun weekend planned, and it would be nice to spend some time with Alice. I was beginning to really look forward to the trip.

* * *

"This has been one crazy weekend!" I exclaimed, collapsing onto the sofa in mock exhaustion as I listened to the last car leaving our drive. Eli had left when our family did, and I was finally alone with my husband for the first time since before the meeting with Aro. "Was that really just last night that we were socializing with Aro?"

"I know what you mean," Edward said, sitting down next to me. "Though technically it was night before last, since it's after midnight now."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, night before last. So you still feel sure that he's really gone?" I curled up next to Edward and he put his arm around me as I leaned against him.

"Yes, Alice's visions still indicate that our lives will go on as normal for the foreseeable future." Edward said softly. I felt his nose nuzzling against the top of my head and heard him inhale, taking in my scent.

"Yeah, it's the unforeseeable future I'm more worried about," I murmured. "How much time do you think we have before Jake and Nessie get home?"

"Their next class starts in five hours. They'll be back in time to shower, eat, and drive to class, and I remember Renesmee thinking about needing to get there early for some reason. I'd say we have three hours, at most."

"I can think of some things we can do for three hours," I said suggestively as I pulled myself up into his lap. I tilted my face up for a kiss, which he granted without hesitation. "I've missed you this weekend," I murmured.

"You've been with me the whole time." He smirked, his face inches from mine.

I leaned back and playfully punched him in the arm. "You know what I mean."

He placed one finger under my chin and gently guided my face back closer to his. "Yes, I've missed you too, love," he said, all trace of teasing gone. "But I'm not sure we have sufficient time for what you have in mind. Really, they could be back at any minute. Jake was planning to come back as soon as the rest of the family was gone. I heard him and Renesmee passing by a few times before the family left, wondering if everyone was gone yet, and then they would leave again when they saw the cars still in the drive."

"That's silly," I said, frowning at Jake's decision to avoid our family for the rest of the weekend. "I know he was upset, but no one is going to hold it against him. We all know he wants what's best for Renesmee."

"I know. I think he was mainly embarrassed to have lost the argument with me in front of the others, and he was embarrassed that he had nearly attacked Carlisle. And he was a little concerned that he might get upset again if he came back. Sitting in a roomful of vampires having polite conversation still goes against his instincts even though he's come to consider us his second family. He just thought it would be less stressful if he came back after they'd gone." Edward tucked a wisp of hair behind my ear and added, "He was probably right."

"I guess I understand that," I said. "And by the next time he sees them, this little incident will have faded slightly from his mind, even if it hasn't faded from ours."

"Exactly. He'll be more comfortable and have less difficulty controlling his anger when yesterday is not so fresh in his mind." He pulled me closer, turning me so that I was leaning back against his chest. He began gently rubbing my arm as he moved my hair to one side. I felt his breath against my skin as his lips passed teasingly up and down my neck.

"This is nice," I whispered, sighing contentedly. "It feels like it's been ages since we had even a few minutes alone."

"It's definitely been a long weekend," Edward agreed. "What did you think about what we learned about Alice?"

"Well, she knows a lot more than she did, but it opened up some questions too." It opened up a _lot _of questions. Alice's niece might be able to answer some of them, and Cora apparently knew something that she was planning to share with us when she visits, but would we ever truly know what Nick had been plotting?

"She was thrilled that you want to go visit her niece with her," Edward murmured, kissing my neck. "Thank you for offering to do that."

"I really hope we can learn more about what her family was told when she entered the asylum and then when she died. There has to be some reason they didn't go back for her."

"My guess is that Nick did something to fake her death," Edward said, moving to the other side of my neck. "From what I saw of her parents in her human memories, they wouldn't have just given up on her so easily. Her family cared about her."

"I know; that's what I was thinking." I hoped we would be able to find her niece, and that her niece would be able to tell her something encouraging about her family. Alice needed to know that they had loved her. I tried to relax and enjoy Edward's attention but my mind continued sifting through some of the other things we had learned. Hearing James' and Victoria's voices again had been quite a shock. "So Victoria was with James that long?" I asked Edward. "Somehow I had the impression that they had only been together for a fairly short time."

"It may have seemed a short time to James; I'm not sure how old he really was," Edward answered. "He was obviously older than she was. She must have been the newborn who escaped from Nick and his two friends. Remember them talking about the "newborn who escaped?"

I nodded; I had made the same assumption. "You said you thought escaping was her talent, or at least the thing she excelled at. It makes sense that she would have gotten away from them. And we already knew James was in the area because of what he had told me about Alice. It makes sense that they could have met there. It sounded like Victoria may have actually been the one who saved Alice from James — if she hadn't distracted him that first time they met in the woods, James would have gotten to Alice before Nick could change her."

"Yes, ironic, isn't it?" Edward said wryly. "No wonder he didn't mention that part to you."

"I wonder if Victoria recognized her scent, or if she even knew that Alice was the only one who had escaped James."

"I don't think she would have recognized the scent," Edward said. "When she was a newborn she smelled Alice's human scent, and the scent of the blood would have been overwhelming to the point that she probably wouldn't have even registered her true unique scent, and that scent could have changed slightly with her transformation anyway. If she recognized Alice, I didn't detect anything in her thoughts. Of course, I was focused mainly on James there in the baseball field, so it's possible that I missed something."

"What about Nick's two friends?" I asked. "Do you think they're still around somewhere?"

"Who knows?" Edward shrugged. "They didn't seem too interested in Alice. They were ready to let James have her. I wonder what they found when they came back looking for the 'yearlings' as they called them. Maybe Cora can tell us more about Nick's two friends, if he didn't erase her memories of them...I suspect that's what he was doing when they made him leave Alice for a few minutes to 'remove evidence.' The two probably would have easily figured out what happened to Nick; they seemed to be aware of James' reputation. Perhaps they gave up on their plan, whatever it was, once they realized Nick had been killed. Cora and the others apparently got away from them. I'll be interested to see what she has to say this weekend."

"Yeah, me too." I tried to imagine what Cora might be able to tell us, but my close proximity to Edward, combined with his occasional kisses and his intoxicating scent, was making it difficult to concentrate. I turned so that I was facing him again, wound my fingers into his hair at the back of his neck, and pulled his mouth down to mine. He returned the kiss, but I could tell he was holding back. If only he wasn't expecting Jake and Nessie to return at any minute…

"Are you ready for school this evening?" Edward asked abruptly, pulling his face back a few inches from mine. "Did you have any homework?"

"I finished it all Friday night while you were teaching lab, just like I usually do," I said as I smirked at him, mildly annoyed at his obvious attempt at distracting me. I wondered if he was hearing Jake and Nessie approaching or if he was just being cautious. "What about you?"

"I have an anatomy paper due tonight but it won't take more than fifteen minutes. I was given a topic I've done a couple of times before."

"Are you bored with your classes?" I asked him, suddenly worried that he was not enjoying himself here nearly as much as I was. The college experience was still new to me; all of my classes were fairly easy, as not much studying was needed when one had perfect recall, but I hadn't yet reached the point of boredom. The classes were far more interesting than the ones I had in high school. And I was enjoying being around people again, even if I felt even more detached from them than I did when I was human. It was easy to forget that none of this was new to Edward. I locked my eyes on his, waiting for his answer.

"I don't mind them," he answered carefully. "Anatomy and biochemistry are a bit monotonous, but there has been a great deal of new research in genetics since I last took that class, and the medical ethics class is really interesting. Carlisle has been enjoying my reports on that class — some of the arguments the kids get into are pretty entertaining." His lips twitched up into a smile as he apparently remembered something amusing from the class.

"So it beats high school, right?" I asked.

"Oh, definitely." He rolled his eyes. "High school is torture. I'll take a college level medical course over Mr. Banner any day." He smiled briefly, but then his expression suddenly shifted, his eyes narrowing in concern. "Why do you ask, love? Are you getting bored with _your_ classes already?"

"Oh, no!" I insisted. "It's still all new to me. I think I'm enjoying my classes almost as much as Nessie is enjoying hers. I was just worried about you. I know you're only here for me."

Edward shook his head. "It's true that I wanted Dartmouth to be your first college experience, but this is what works well for the entire family right now. And if we weren't here, I'd probably be going to school somewhere else — either high school or college — because that's just the easiest way for us to live among humans without raising suspicion. If I find some of my classes a little boring, that's _not your fault_. Okay?" He looked into my eyes with concern, no doubt looking for assurance that I wasn't going to blame myself his boredom. He knew me too well.

_I know_, I thought in response, pushing my shield away momentarily in an attempt to alleviate his concern. I knew he was right; if we weren't here, he would have boring classes someplace else. Still, it didn't seem fair that he was suffering through such monotony while I was gaining new experiences. I just wanted him to enjoy his time here too.

"Every day with you is a new experience," he said earnestly. "For me, classes are just part of the human charade, and they only take up a small percentage of my time. It's the time I get to spend with my amazing wife and our beautiful daughter that makes it all worth it. I'm enjoying seeing the two of you experience college for the first time. I know you aren't getting the full, traditional college experience, but I'm very pleased that you like it here and that you're enjoying college. I'm truly happy with my life right now."

"I'm glad," I said, stroking the side of his face with the backs of my fingers. I did not miss that he had used the word "life." He still sometimes referred to his "existence," and I had picked up the habit as well, but he often used the word "life" in the context of our relationship. He had told me once that I had given him life, whereas he had merely existed before. And I felt the same way about him.

He pulled me into another kiss, less restrained this time. I thrilled to the sensation of his lips moving softly with mine. I had missed this the past few days. In the back of my mind, I began to wonder if he had forgotten about Jake and Nessie, when he pulled back, giving me a final kiss on the tip of my nose.

"They're almost here," he said. "They're running this way now."

"Okay," I whispered, forcing myself to behave rather than pulling his face back to me. I settled for running my fingers through his hair, and tried to turn my thoughts to our daughter. I loved having her live with us, even if it somewhat limited the time I had alone with Edward. "This really is the perfect place for us to live right now," I said, looking up at Edward. "It's great having her so close, and I'm loving seeing her so excited to be out in the 'real world' attending college. She's made so many friends since we've moved here!"

"I know," Edward said, smiling at the mention of our rather sociable daughter. "Did she tell you there's a group from their marketing class coming over tonight, and her microeconomics study group is coming over again after their class is over Tuesday morning?"

"No, I don't think she mentioned it. Or maybe I was too preoccupied with worrying about Aro's visit to pay attention."

"They'll probably be gone by the time we get back from class tonight, so I doubt we'll see the marketing group. But Tuesday is going to be sunny so we'll be stuck here; I guess we'll be seeing that group again."

"We could leave before sunrise if you really want to avoid them," I suggested.

"No, that's not necessary. Ness thought I was rude the last time they were here. And she's right; I can't go hide every time her friends come over. Chloe hasn't been as fixated on me lately, anyway. Her mother started chemotherapy last week, and she's been really worried about her. She hardly even thought of me Friday night; she was focused on getting her lab completed so she could get back to her room and call her mom."

"That's terrible," I said as I thought back on the bubbly girl I had met a few weeks earlier. "Do you think her mom will be okay?"

"From what I picked up from her thoughts, I don't much think they caught it early enough. Her mother's doctor said it was in a pretty advanced stage. Chloe is clinging to the hope that it's treatable, but it's human nature to believe your loved one will beat the odds. She's in denial right now, looking forward to spending some quality time with her over winter break. I just hope the woman lives that long."

I heard a shriek in the distance which sounded rather like my daughter. It was immediately followed by Jake's deep, unrestrained laughter. Edward pinched the bridge of his nose, and I jumped up to look out the window in the direction of the noise. I could see Jacob and Renesmee in the distance, at the edge of the woods behind our house. Jake had her pinned to the ground, and she was laughing playfully. She turned her face to his and they shared a passionate kiss. Not wanting to continue spying on them, I turned to leave the window just in time to see Edward fly past me and out the back door.

"You can come back in," he called out to them. "The family's gone now."

They jumped up and began making their way back to the house. Renesmee's cheeks flamed with embarrassment, and I extended my shield around them as they approached.

"I'm sorry, Dad," Nessie apologized, looking contrite. "I wasn't paying attention; I should have realized we were so close to the house."

"Not your fault, darling," Edward told her. "You were being chased by a deranged, oversized wolf." He turned to glare at Jake, who wore a slight smirk on his face.

"Sorry," Jake said dutifully but with a slight grin, his insincerity obvious.

Edward sighed. "Aside from the fact that that was completely juvenile…" He shook his head reproachfully and started again. "Jake, I think that perhaps you still don't realize exactly what you're doing."

Jake stood with his arms folded and eyebrows raised, waiting for him to continue.

Edward pinched the bridge of his nose again and seemed to calm himself a bit. When he spoke again his voice was softer and more controlled. "You seem to think that letting me overhear your thoughts about your wife is a good way to get under my skin, that it will make me feel annoyed and a bit uncomfortable in much the same way that you and Nessie would prefer not to witness physical affection between Bella and me. But it's not the same thing. It's not like I'm just watching you kiss each other, Jake."

"I know, I know, you can hear what we're thinking too," Jake interrupted. "You don't like having to hear my thoughts about your daughter. And I have 'vivid mental images.'" He made quote marks in the air with his fingers.

"Jake, can't you just apologize?" Renesmee pleaded.

Jake snorted. "All I did was kiss my wife. It's not a federal offense."

Edward closed his eyes and sighed again. "I don't just _hear_ your thoughts, Jake. I get everything from a first-person perspective. I am experiencing the kiss _with_ you, with all the associated thoughts and sensations, and I'm seeing her through your eyes. I get her scent as you perceive it. And when she kisses you back, I am experiencing that with her, as well."

"Oh," Jake said, looking stunned and perhaps a little sick. "That's really perverted." He glanced over at Renesmee, who looked rather uncomfortable with the conversation.

Edward's explanation had caught me a little off guard as well; I had never thought of it that way before. I had heard him speak of looking through another person's eyes and eavesdropping on conversations through another person's ears, but I thought of those as things he could do deliberately when he wanted. And he had explained to me how when Jasper or Emmett struggled with control in the presence of humans, the pain in his own throat doubled. I should have understood better than I did why he had asked me to keep Jake and Nessie shielded back when their relationship first began to turn romantic. Like Jake, I had understood that Edward disliked overhearing their thoughts while they were being physically affectionate, but I hadn't considered exactly how much of it Edward could perceive or how difficult it might be for him to shift his focus well enough to block it.

"I don't particularly enjoy kissing either you _or_ my daughter," Edward continued, sounding calmer now that Jake was beginning to comprehend. "So I try very hard to block that out. But Bella was the only one here with me, so there were no other thoughts I could concentrate on. All I could do to try to tune you out was to focus on my own thoughts, trying to shift them to the medical text I read last week and recalling a musical composition in my mind. But as you are aware, your thoughts are particularly loud and vivid. And you were intentionally sending them my direction, which made them much harder to tune out."

"I'm sorry, man," Jake said, looking more genuinely apologetic. "I never thought of it that way before. Why didn't you explain that sooner?"

"Well, you don't usually do it on purpose, and Bella has you shielded most of the time when we're in the same house. You knew about my gift, and I didn't think I needed to spell it out for you, but I guess I did. I know you're still a bit annoyed at me for yesterday. You thought I was treating you in a condescending manner and I apologize for that; it wasn't my intention. But purposefully throwing this sort of imagery at me isn't the best way to let me know when you're upset. It is, as you said, rather perverted."

"Yeah," Jake said, still looking a little green. "I'll find other ways to get under your skin."

"I'm sure you will," Edward agreed, a small smile creeping into his expression.

"So how did you manage to live with three happy couples for so many years?" Jake asked. "I assume they did more than just kiss..."

Renesmee's blush became even more pronounced and she stared pointedly at the floor, looking as though she wished she could sink through it. I couldn't blame her…she had just heard her father describing how he felt the kiss she had just shared with her husband, and she was now about to be treated to talk about the sex lives of her aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

"It wasn't easy," Edward told Jake. "I spent a lot of time in my room concentrating on music, and I spent a lot of time out in the forest alone. Most of them tried to restrain themselves when I was around or at least give me some warning of when I might want to leave. Rose and Emmett don't particularly care, but the others like to maintain some semblance of privacy for themselves."

"Bella, are you shielding us right now?" Jake asked me.

"Yes, I've been shielding you since right before you came into the house," I answered.

Jake grinned and looked at Edward. "So you won't mind then if I kiss my wife right now?"

Edward rolled his eyes. "Go ahead. Bella and I were just headed upstairs."

* * *

**A/N: What did you think of the Cullens' and Eli's theories about Nick? What was your favorite part of the chapter? I'd love to hear what you're thinking.  
**


	28. Cora

Chapter 28: Cora

I pulled into our garage, surprised to see the Vanquish already there. Jake and Nessie usually ate in the cafeteria on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings so that they could socialize with their friends. I had grown accustomed to having the house to myself for an hour or two on Friday evenings while they were at the cafeteria and Edward was teaching his lab. It was the time I usually spent getting caught up on homework and replying to Renée's emails.

The smell of pizza hit me as I opened the door into the house. I put away my jacket and backpack and went into the family room where I could hear the television on, loud enough to nearly drown out the sounds of the two familiar heartbeats. Jake and Nessie were snuggled up together on the couch.

"Hi, Mom!" Nessie called out, smiling.

"Hey, Bells," Jake mumbled, glancing up at me.

"Hey," I answered, eyeing the two empty pizza boxes on the floor. "Not in the mood for cafeteria food tonight?"

"Our friends all had other plans, so we thought we'd just come home," Jake said.

"Brianna and Taylor went home for the weekend to visit family," Renesmee added. "Matt, Jeremy, and Adam weren't in class today because they have that stomach bug that's going around, and Michaela and Megan had a sorority event tonight. And Chloe's in Dad's lab on Fridays. So that just left Jake and me."

Jake stretched and then sat up a little straighter. "Yeah, and then Sam called and asked if we could have our pack meeting tonight instead of tomorrow, 'cause a bunch of the guys have tickets for some concert Saturday night. I think I'm gonna go ahead and phase. Maybe we can get started a little early. They're still going over Aro's visit, and they're a little nervous about Cora coming tonight, so this could take a while." He shrugged out of his shirt and deposited it on top of the pizza boxes.

"Would you mind throwing those out as you leave?" I asked, tilting my head to gesture toward the empty boxes. "They really smell."

"Oh, sure, sure," he replied, scooping them up as he headed out of the room, leaving the shirt in the floor. The offending scent of the pizza still lingered, but it was not as strong.

"I was going to do my homework, but we could do something together, if you want," I suggested, realizing how much I missed spending time with my daughter without Jake around. "We don't get to spend much time with just the two of us anymore."

Renesmee smiled up at me. "Actually, I was wondering if you could help me with something. I want to surprise Jake."

"Sure. What's the surprise?"

"Rachel sent me a brownie recipe and I was wondering if you could help me with it," she said.

"Rachel?" I asked. "The one in your psychology class?"

"No, Jake's sister," she answered. "She emailed it to me. It was their mom's. She said that when she and Rebecca still lived at home, they always used to make a batch every year on her birthday in her memory. Today would have been Sarah's fiftieth birthday."

"Oh, I didn't realize it was her birthday," I said, sitting down beside her. I tried to recall Jacob's mother, but any memory I had of her face was long gone. I was fairly certain that those early human memories had already faded even before my change. I did, however, have one impression of her that remained. I had an extremely hazy memory of a woman standing at the stove. "All I can remember about her is that she was always in the kitchen."

"Yes, apparently she loved to cook," Renesmee told me. "And bake. Rachel said these brownies remind them of her more than anything. She suggested I make some for Jake tonight."

"Has he said anything about his mom today?" I asked.

"No. He's talked to me about her before, but he hasn't said anything today. I know he remembers what day it is, though…he's just seemed a little distracted today. I think he was glad that we didn't end up eating with our friends tonight. So you'll help? You've made brownies before, right?"

"Sure. It's been a while, but I think we can handle it," I assured her.

"Here's the recipe," she said, handing me a folded piece of paper. "I printed it out earlier."

"Come on, let's see if we have the ingredients."

She followed me into the kitchen, and surprisingly, we did have everything that was needed. It was a simple recipe for chocolate brownies, and it only took us about five minutes to have the ingredients mixed up and the pan in the oven.

"Mom?" Renesmee asked tentatively.

"What, baby?"

She sat down in a chair at the table, and I followed suit.

"Mom, Chloe told me today that her mom has cancer."

"I know," I said, nodding solemnly.

She looked up at me questioningly.

"Your dad said she was thinking about it in lab last week."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"Well, I guess I assumed she would tell you herself. You know how your dad feels about sharing people's personal thoughts. And it could have seemed suspicious if she told you and you already knew."

Renesmee closed her eyes and frowned in frustration. "Whatever. It doesn't really matter. She's really upset about it, though. I just wish there was something we could do to help her. I know she's not your favorite person, after the way she acted about Dad, but…"

"I don't hold that against her," I assured her. "If I were a human in your dad's lab, I'd be crushing on him too."

She rolled her eyes at me.

"I wish we could help her too, sweetheart," I told her sadly, "but unfortunately, there are some things that money and vampire powers can't fix."

Her eyes flashed up to mine and I could see tears forming. "She's going to die, isn't she? What else did Dad say? Has Alice seen something?"

I reached for her and she leaned into my embrace, resting her face against my shoulder. I felt a hot tear soaking into the fabric of my shirt. "No, Alice hasn't seen anything," I told her. "Your dad just heard her remembering what the doctor had told them. The cancer is already in an advanced stage. I'm not sure there's anything anyone can do."

Renesmee's shoulders began to shake. "Her mom is all she has," she said, sobbing. "Her dad has remarried and hasn't bothered to keep in contact, and she doesn't have any brothers or sisters. She'll be so lost without her mom."

I ran my fingers lightly through her hair, unsure of how to comfort her.

"I remember when I thought I was going to lose you and Daddy," she continued, looking up at me, her eyes still brimming with tears. "When you put me on Jake's back and told him my bag had what we needed…" She let out a shuddering sigh. "But at least I had my Jacob. Chloe doesn't have anyone!"

"I know. You know the saying, 'Life isn't fair'…. It may sound trite, but it's still true. Human lives end, and sometimes there's nothing we can do. Chloe does have you, though. She's fortunate to have a friend who cares so much."

"But I can't do anything to help her!" she said through her teeth, her frustration growing.

"You can just be there for her. Listen if she feels like talking about it. Take her to a movie to distract her from her worries…"

"Eli knew, didn't he?" Her eyes darted up to mine as the realization hit her. The Tuesday morning/afternoon study session had been interesting. Edward and I had remained in the room as they studied, pretending to be doing homework on our laptops. Edward had invited Eli to hang out with us rather than spend the day cooped up in his nearly empty apartment avoiding the sun, so he had come over before dawn and stayed until it was time for our chemistry lab. When the study group arrived, he had abandoned the video game he had been playing and joined right in with the group. Chloe was quite obviously attracted to him, and I had been shocked to realize that Eli was responding by actually flirting with her.

"Yes, I think he heard it in your dad's thoughts," I answered her.

"Dad wanted him to flirt with her?" she asked incredulously.

"No, of course not. We both talked to him afterward. He just wanted to distract her from her problems and let her enjoy the day. He was trying to help her, in his own way."

"Wasn't that dangerous, since he couldn't hear her thoughts? You had us all shielded, right? Or were you in on it?"

"I had everyone shielded at first, but when they started flirting I dropped the shield from Chloe, Eli, and Edward, so your dad could monitor the situation and send Eli some silent reminders to tone it down…and so both of them could monitor her responses to make sure she wasn't suspecting anything odd."

"She doesn't think he's odd. She thinks he's the hottest guy she's ever met." Renesmee rolled her eyes. "He's distracting her, all right. Hopefully she'll find someone new soon. You know she was ogling Jacob before she started crushing on Dad, right?"

"No…" I laughed sharply. "No one mentioned that. It didn't bother you?"

"I'm Jake's imprint. It's not like he would be able to return her interest even if he wanted to. She just thought he was good-looking, and she's right. It's probably a good thing I couldn't hear _all_ of her thoughts, but she didn't really say anything inappropriate. Anyway, she just keeps going from one guy to the next, but Eli's the first one who's seemed to return the interest at all. She's probably sitting around waiting for him to call her. Do you know she's never had a real boyfriend? She's gone out with several guys, but she's never really had a 'relationship.' She thinks he really likes her…and I kind of thought maybe he did too," she admitted softy, looking up at me. She had stopped crying, but there was still redness around her eyes.

"He won't let it go that far, honey. It wouldn't be safe for her. Eli doesn't have your dad's control. Even if he did like her in that way – which he doesn't – just trying to kiss her could be fatal. He won't take that kind of risk with her. He was just trying to take her mind off of her problems for the afternoon."

Renesmee nodded. I knew she understood. I had suspected that Eli might be doing more harm than good, despite his intentions. Chloe had seemed to really enjoy herself that day, though. Hopefully she would move on to her next crush soon…preferably a _human_ crush next time. I could relate to her tendencies toward the supernatural, but it would really be much safer for her to find a human boyfriend who could return her affection without placing her life in danger.

"Well, at least Chloe will get to see her mom over winter break," Renesmee said. "She'll have at least three weeks with her then."

I sucked in a quick breath. "She isn't planning to go home next week for Thanksgiving?" I asked.

Renesmee shook her head. "She doesn't have a car. Her cousin's giving her a ride home for winter break, but he's not going home for Thanksgiving. He lives further north and will be passing through here on his way home. Why?" I could see her concern growing as she took in the look on my face, and her voice increased in pitch as she continued speaking. "Dad doesn't think her mom will make it through winter break?"

"There's no way we can know that. I mean, Alice might could…" I sighed. "But there are some things that it's just better not to know."

"Could I loan her the Vanquish?" she asked. "So she could go home for Thanksgiving?"

"Of course. You don't need my permission for that. That's your car, and Jake's. You can discuss it with Jake, but you two can do whatever you want with that car. It might be safer to loan her the Sequoia, though; she might be more tempted to speed in the Vanquish, and I don't want her getting herself killed."

"You would really do that, even after how she acted about Dad?"

"Sure. She's your friend."

She started to give me a hug, but the oven timer went off, indicating it was time to check on the brownies.

* * *

The doorbell had not yet finished sounding its chime when I swung open the front door to welcome our visitors. Eli had told us that Cora would probably be visiting us this weekend, and I was eager to meet her.

There in the doorway next to Eli's familiar form was a stunningly beautiful young woman. Her sleek, silky hair was long and straight; it was nearly black, but I could see the hint of some brown overtones. Her dark hair contrasted sharply with her pale porcelain skin – the lightest I had ever seen, even for a vampire. The slight slant of her eyes gave her what I considered to be a somewhat exotic look. Eli had said she was from Kentucky, but I found myself wondering where her family had been from originally.

Somehow her youthfulness and beauty had managed to catch me by surprise, even though those traits were the norm for our kind. I realized I had been expecting an older woman. That was probably due in part to the old-fashioned quality of her name and in part because I knew Eli regarded her as an older sister, and at twenty-six, Eli was as old as Esme…and older than Carlisle. However, Cora appeared to be no more than about twenty years old. She was stylishly dressed, too – I suspected Alice would approve.

I made a conscious effort to clear the surprise from my face, hoping she somehow hadn't noticed my shock at her appearance. I smiled and extended my hand. "I'm Bella," I introduced myself. "Please come on in." I realized as I was speaking that she seemed apprehensive, and I remembered what Eli had said earlier – she was probably intimidated by the size of our family.

"What _are_ you?" she hissed, ignoring my outstretched hand as she gripped Eli's upper arm possessively and pushed him behind her as if to protect him.

"I'm Bella," I repeated, confused. "Eli told you about our family, didn't he?"

Eli wrested his arm free of her grip and rolled his eyes, clearly annoyed by her attempt to protect him. "Cora, Bella is a shield, remember? You probably won't be able to read her intentions, but I assure you she means us no harm."

"You've read her thoughts?" Cora's eyes flashed to his.

"Well, no," Eli admitted, "but I've told you how their entire family has proven to be trustworthy. I've gotten to know Bella and Edward fairly well over the past several weeks and they have shown themselves to be good friends."

"It's just unsettling," Cora said, forcing a smile as she looked up at me. "It's like you aren't even there."

"Is this better?" I asked, temporarily forcing my shield off to the side.

"Much," she said, her smile becoming genuine and she finally reached to shake my hand. "So you can turn it on and off?"

"Something like that. I can set it aside, but it requires concentration to keep it from snapping back into place." I held the door open wider and motioned for them to come in as I allowed my shield to return to its natural position. I wouldn't be shielding anyone while she was here; we had talked before she arrived and Eli had suggested that I not shield Jacob or Renesmee because Cora would feel uneasy not being able to "read" them.

Cora and Eli finally stepped inside and I led them to the family room where Edward, Renesmee, and Jacob were waiting, and we made introductions. Eli sat down on the sofa on one side of Edward. Cora remained in the doorway, regarding Jake and Nessie curiously. Her nose crinkled delicately as she caught a whiff of Jake's scent.

"I know, I stink," Jake laughed, seeming to dispel some of the awkwardness. "You guys don't smell so nice to me either, so we'll call it even, okay?"

Cora growled at him.

"He won't hurt you," Eli told her, sounding a little impatient with his creator.

"You're getting mixed signals from Jacob because his instincts are to rip us apart," Edward explained to her. "He's been successfully suppressing those instincts for years. His control is really quite good…better than that of most of his kind. He won't try to hurt you as long as you're not threatening us and you don't hunt in this immediate vicinity."

"What was he thinking just then?" she demanded.

"He was thinking that he didn't like your red eyes and was reminding himself that you are our guest and a potential ally," Edward answered. "He has no intention of harming you."

Cora looked to Eli for reassurance, and Eli nodded, indicating his agreement with what Edward had just told her.

"You'll have some warning if I lose control because I'll turn into a giant wolf," Jake offered with a grin. "And I'm not allowed to do that in the house."

Cora nodded but continued to eye him warily. "I can hear both of your hearts beating, and yet it doesn't make me thirsty," Cora observed after a moment, still standing in the doorway.

"That's a good thing," Renesmee told her, smiling.

"Yes. Forgive me; this is all just very strange for me – a shield, a half-vampire mated to a wolf-boy, and another mind reader. I'm glad you're all friendly." She chuckled nervously as she made her way over to the recliner, keeping her eyes on Jacob, and then glanced around at us curiously before she sat down. I claimed my spot next to Edward, and his arm slid around my shoulders automatically, only to be removed a second later when he answered his phone.

"Yes, Alice?" he said into the phone.

"_Carlisle and I will be there in forty-five minutes!"_ I heard Alice trill on the other end of the line. _"Don't you dare start without me!"_

"We already discussed this," he told her firmly, though I knew he had already lost the argument. "If she is agreeable to meeting you, we will bring her by later."

"_Edward, she won't mind! Forty-four minutes."_

"That's the psychic? And the leader of your coven is with her?" Cora asked.

"Yes, I'm afraid they're on their way here," Edward said as he slipped his phone back into his pocket and put his arm back around me. "I had asked them to stay in Cambridge because Eli said you'd be more comfortable with a smaller group. However, Alice doesn't always listen to me." He rolled his eyes. "And Carlisle trusts her visions and he's nearly as eager to meet you as Alice is."

"Let them come," Cora said with a small sigh. "When Eli told me of the size of your coven I was naturally hesitant to put myself in a position with such uneven numbers, but I sense no ill intent from any of you, aside from the wolf-boy. If you trust these two then I suspect I will as well."

"Carlisle will certainly make you feel at ease," I assured her, smiling as a hazy human memory of the first time I met him came to mind. Both he and Alice had made me feel quite welcome. "Alice can be a little over-exuberant at times, but I'm sure you'll like her as well."

Cora nodded politely but did not look entirely convinced. "So while we're waiting for them, would you mind telling me a little more about yourselves and the other members of your coven?"

We filled her in on Carlisle's history - how he had developed his unnatural control and how he had lived with the Volturi for a few decades but left when they persisted in trying to change his diet. We explained about his decision to change Edward and told the stories of how each of us had joined the family. We had just finished telling about Renesmee's birth when I heard the Mercedes approaching.

"Yes, Carlisle, Cora said it's okay," Edward said without raising his voice when the Mercedes came to a stop in front of our house. Carlisle must have been mentally checking with Edward before exiting the car.

Alice came on in without any pretense of using the doorbell, and Carlisle followed close behind her. After the appropriate introductions were made, Carlisle pulled in a chair from the kitchen and Alice perched on the arm of the love seat next to Renesmee.

"Don't worry, Alice, we just filled her in on some family history. You didn't miss anything," Edward assured her.

Alice mouthed a silent "thank you" and glanced over at Cora. She was being uncharacteristically quiet, and I realized she had not greeted Cora with the same enthusiasm as she did Eli or me when she first met us. Perhaps she had seen that such a gesture would not have been well-received?

"So," Cora began, getting right down to business, "Eli tells me your coven has survived a confrontation with the Volturi."

"That's right," I answered. "Someone saw Renesmee when she was younger and told the Volturi that we had an immortal child. It was the excuse they had been waiting for, and they came to destroy us. Carlisle had a number of friends who came to witness for us, and the number of witnesses was enough to make them pause for a discussion. The presence of the two wolf packs was a surprise to them too. But they were still planning to attack until Alice showed up with proof that half-vampires can reach maturity without risk of exposure – that defeated the last bit of logic they were using against us. They didn't want the witnesses they had brought to see them attack us with no justification, so they turned and left."

"You failed to mention your own role," Cora said, looking me in the eye. "Eli said they were afraid because of your shield."

"Yes, I guess my shield was a factor in their decision to retreat," I admitted.

"My wife is much too modest," Edward told her. "They were very afraid of her shield. You should have heard their thoughts when they realized she was shielding _all_ of us." I could feel him glancing down at me with pride as he squeezed my shoulder. "They could not attack us without it resulting in heavy casualties on their side in addition to ours. And for the first time in millennia, they weren't assured of a victory. They realized it would be a fair fight, and that was something they weren't prepared for."

"And you just let them go?" she asked.

"We were only defending ourselves," Edward answered. "We never wanted to fight them. Our goal was to keep our family intact. Chasing after them and picking a fight would have defeated our purpose. As I said, it would have been a fair fight, but there would almost certainly have been casualties on our side as well."

Cora nodded, seeming to consider his answer. She looked as though she was about to say something else, but Edward spoke before she had the chance.

"Would you mind telling us a little about yourself?" he asked. "We'll be happy to answer all of your questions about our family and our encounters with the Volturi, but we're all very curious about your history as well. Why are you so interested in the Volturi?"

"I've lived in fear of them my entire life," she said, her voice dripping with malice. She glanced around at us, took a deep breath, and explained, "I was told of them as a newborn, but came to realize that not everything I was told was true. There was a period of time when I wondered if they even existed, but I've encountered enough vampires who have met them or heard of them to conclude that they're real and that my fears are probably justified. So far, I've managed to avoid them; as far as I know, they don't know I exist."

"That's why you didn't want to meet us before our little visit from Aro last weekend," Edward observed.

"Right." Cora nodded. "My decision to come talk to you was not made lightly. I realize you are likely to encounter them again at some point, and since you've met me they may learn of me. Eli said the rumors of Aro's ability were understated – he said he can take all of a person's memories with a single touch?"

"Yes, I've experienced his gift on two different occasions," Edward told her. "He can take everything in a matter of seconds. It's not like with Eli, though. The only reason I knew what he was taking my memories was because of my talent; I could see in his mind what he was taking, but I wasn't reliving it like when Eli accesses my memories."

"I'm not sure which would be worse," Cora pondered, "to blindly know everything was being taken, or to know which memory he was reading because I was reliving it."

"I'd take a scan from Eli over Aro any day," Edward replied.

Cora raised her eyebrows, seeming doubtful. "You've experienced one of Eli's scans?"

"Yes, we were having a practice fight, and he didn't think it was fair that I was distracting him by intentionally showing him multiple people's thoughts simultaneously. I knew he was holding back and I told him to give me his best shot."

"I wasn't thinking clearly," Eli interjected. "He gave me permission and I was focused on the fight. What you've experienced was nothing compared to what I did to him, Cora. I'm surprised he's even still speaking to me."

"What did you do?" Cora's tone indicated surprise at the idea that it could be worse than what she had experienced. "Did you pull up his transformation?"

"No, I had my wits about me enough to avoid that, but what I ended up pulling was just as bad."

"How so?" Cora still looked incredulous.

"There is one on the Volturi guard who can make you feel as though you're burning – it's as intense as the fires of the transformation. Edward has experienced her gift," Eli explained.

"You've heard of her before?" Edward asked Cora.

"Yes, I was warned about Jane. That was one of the things I had been told, but I wasn't sure if it was true."

"I can assure you that it is," Edward said.

"What did you do to provoke them?" Cora asked. "Bella said earlier that they were waiting for an excuse to attack you. Why?"

"Aro and Caius were concerned that our family had grown large enough to pose a threat to them," Edward answered. "They considered it a pre-emptive strike."

"And you hadn't done anything to make them feel threatened, aside from amassing a large coven?" she asked.

"No. In fact, Aro knew that we had no interest in deposing them or engaging them in a fight. He had taken my memories earlier in the year; he knew every thought I'd ever had, as well as every thought that my family members have ever had in my presence. And he knows how Carlisle abhors violence in any form. It was irrational for them to feel threatened, but the idea of a coven becoming as large and as gifted as their own makes them very uncomfortable."

"So you think they came only to destroy you?" Cora asked. "They weren't interested in forcing your gifted members into service? I was told that if they knew of my talent, they would come after me. I would think a shield would be more tempting to them one who can discern intentions." Cora glanced at me as she made reference to my talent.

"They want our talents, but they know we'll never join," I told her. "They offered positions to Edward, Alice, and me when we first met them, back when I was still human. We all declined."

"When you were still human?" Cora raised one eyebrow. "And they just let you go? They didn't force any of you? Was Chelsea not there?"

"Chelsea tried," Edward answered. "But she wasn't able to break the bonds between Bella and me or between Alice and Jasper. And of course Bella's shield protected her from feeling her influence. So, tell me, how do you know of Chelsea? Who told you that the Volturi would force you to join?"

Cora hesitated, seeming unsure if she wanted to answer the question.

"Many of our kind would feel it was an honor to be offered the opportunity to serve with the elite guard," Carlisle told her. "Who taught you to fear them?"

Cora still hesitated for a moment, but then she glanced back at Edward's waiting expression and answered, probably realizing he'd already seen it in her mind. "My creator. I don't know his name or what happened to him. He spent a year training us to defend ourselves against the Volturi, and then he just disappeared. At first I assumed they captured him or killed him, but as the months and years passed with no sign of the Volturi coming after me, I began to doubt some of the things I had been told."

"Eli hasn't told you what we learned this past weekend." Edward observed.

"About the visit from Aro? He told me that it was essentially uneventful and that there seemed to be no immediate threat. We haven't had much time to talk, though. We came straight here once I made it into town."

"I haven't told her anything about Alice's memories," Eli offered. "I thought it might be better for us to discuss that as a group."

The corners of Edward's mouth twitched upward, and I wondered what was funny. Eli gave him a warning glare, and he carefully returned his face to a neutral expression.

"Eli scanned Alice's human memories last weekend," Edward explained. "She awoke to this life with no memories of her human life or of her transformation, and she had always wondered what her life was like when she was human, so she asked Eli to try scanning those memories. He was able to pull them up so that he and I could see them, but she still couldn't see them herself, so we narrated them for her." He paused. "It seems that her creator and yours were the same – Eli recognized him. His name was Nick."

"Nick?" Cora's eyes narrowed as she considered this bit of information. "He didn't look like a Nick. And he never mentioned another newborn. Did you learn anything else about him?"

"He was killed by James, who had caught Alice's scent and decided to track her," Edward explained. "We think Nick had the ability to delete memories; that seems to be the most logical explanation for the gaps in Alice's human memories at the asylum as well as why she can't remember her human life now. He was staring at her when he died and he looked like he was trying to do something to her. He –"

"Wait," Cora interrupted. "Was James with the Volturi? And why didn't he drain Alice after he killed Nick?"

"No, James wasn't with the Volturi," Edward answered. "At least, not as far as we know. He was very much the independent type. And Alice was too far along in the transformation process when James found them. He told Bella he killed Nick in vengeance, and that Alice was the only prey who had ever escaped him."

"So you know James?" Cora looked over at me.

"No, he attacked me when I was human," I began.

"And you survived?" she hissed before I could finish the story. She stared openly at me in wonder. "Your gift worked even when you were human? It shielded you from his attack?"

"No, my shield only works against mental intrusions," I explained. "It didn't do anything to protect me from James. Edward and his family rescued me."

Cora glared at Edward. "So you killed him," she said accusingly, guessing the outcome of such an encounter. "He could have had answers to a lot of my questions...and a lot of your questions." She glanced pointedly at Alice as she finished speaking.

"Of course we killed him," Edward answered. "He attacked my mate. And I didn't get the impression from Alice's memories that he knew Nick. I think he had just come across his and Alice's scents in the forest and decided to pursue her. I don't think James would have known anything about Nick's plans."

"Was James traveling alone? Or was there anyone with him who might know something of his past?" she asked.

"There were two others with him when we first met, but I eventually had to destroy his mate as well, and Jacob took care of the other one," Edward told her.

"Why?" Cora eyed Jacob suspiciously, seeming to size up whether she believed he could take out a vampire.

"Well, I wasn't going to let him kill Bella," Jacob said, as if that explained everything.

"They both came after Bella too, at separate times," Edward explained. "Her blood smelled particularly sweet, and his mate held a grudge against us for James' death. We had no choice but to destroy both of them. But I seriously doubt they would have known anything about Nick. Even if James knew anything, he didn't seem to care much for either Victoria or Laurent; they just traveled with him because he was such a good fighter, and he kept Victoria around because she was good at planning escape routes."

"And Nick could remove memories? I wonder why he never removed mine. I still remember _some_ things from my human years... a large portion of my human memories have faded, but I'm told that's normal."

"Can you tell us about the circumstances of your transformation?" Edward asked.

"You've already seen it in my mind, haven't you?" Cora looked chagrined.

"Yes," Edward admitted, "but I'd prefer that you share it yourself."

"I was a patient at Eastern State Hospital…"

"And that was?" Edward prompted.

"It was an insane asylum. You mentioned Alice was in an asylum too." She turned to look at Alice. "Were you at Eastern State, too?"

"No, I was in an asylum in Biloxi, Mississippi," Alice said.

"I think we're beginning to detect a pattern," Edward said. "Nick also visited the hospital in Chicago where I was dying of the Spanish Influenza; it wasn't a mental hospital, but it's possible they may have had a psychiatric ward."

"You met him?" Cora looked up at him in surprise. "But you said Carlisle was the one who changed you…"

"Right, Carlisle stole me away from the hospital when I was near death. I never met Nick, and Carlisle doesn't remember meeting him either, but considering what we are theorizing concerning his talent, I am wondering if he could have removed Carlisle's memories of him. I'm sure it would have been easy for him to steal patients during the epidemic; there were so many dead and dying that if someone disappeared, it would have just been assumed that they died of influenza."

"So how do you know Nick was there at your hospital in Chicago?"

"My mother had saved a newspaper clipping about the epidemic that happened to have a picture of the hospital with Nick standing on the steps. I guess Eli hadn't told you about that, either."

"No, he didn't." She gave Eli a reproving look, and he just shrugged. "So, your mother? You mean your _human_ mother?"

"Yes, both of my parents died in the epidemic, but I still own the estate. Bella and I visited the house recently and we brought some pictures and newspaper clippings back with us. My mother had saved them in a box in her closet. Eli recognized Nick in the picture as the one who had changed you."

Cora shook her head slightly, as if it didn't entirely make sense but she wasn't going to bother questioning him about the details. It must seem odd to her that he would own the estate and have such a tangible connection to his human years.

"Do you know why you were in an asylum?" I asked. I wondered if her talent had manifested itself somehow when she was human, like Alice's did. Alice's talent, in an indirect way, was what had caused her to end up in a mental institution. Perhaps Nick had lured Cora into those circumstances just as he had Alice?

"I'm not sure if there was really anything wrong with me or if my father just left me there because he couldn't handle caring for me after Mother died," Cora said, seeming to grow sad at the memory. "I was only twelve or thirteen at the time. I spent over half of my human life in that place."

Over half? That would make her at least twenty-five, but she looked much younger. I was about to ask how old she was at the time of her transformation when Edward voiced his next question.

"And can you tell us how you came to be one of us?" he asked.

"One night when I was nearly asleep, what I thought to be an extremely handsome young man showed up and said I was being released. I thought it was odd, with it being so late at night, and with not having been informed earlier, and I remember thinking that perhaps I was only dreaming. Then the pain overwhelmed me and I wasn't aware of much else until it subsided and I found myself in the woods with my creator."

"Nick," Alice said, her eyes wide.

"Yes, the one you knew as Nick. He never told me his name. He insisted that I call him… 'Master.'" Her upper lip curled in distaste. "He told me that he had created me and that this made him my master, and that it was in my best interest to do as he said."

"And what did your gift tell you?" Edward asked. "What could you see of his intentions?"

"My gift very was confusing at first," Cora answered. "It took most of my first year before I was able to reliably distinguish between intentions toward me and intentions toward others, and when reading intentions towards others, I had to learn to distinguish between how those intentions would affect me and how they would affect the others. So it wasn't unusual for me to get mixed readings at first. There were even a few occasions where I had trouble sensing people, but that seemed to have cleared up after the first year. So my initial reaction to my creator was conflicted. I didn't fully trust him, but I had no one else to turn to, and most of the time my readings from him were rather neutral; it didn't seem that he intended me harm, at least not directly. In hindsight, I think we were just tools to him; he wanted to keep us alive, but beyond that I don't think he really cared."

"Did you ever try to leave?" Renesmee asked. "You said you stayed for a year; what kept you there?"

"His stories about the Volturi were what kept me from trying to escape. He described them as a powerful and exceedingly large coven, intent on collecting talent and enlarging their guard. He said they had appointed themselves rulers of the world, and that they ruled with an iron fist. He told me they had spies everywhere and that we must avoid detection or risk being forced to serve them. He said I had to stay with him, or in the area of the woods he had assigned to me, or else they would find me and either destroy me or add me to their guard. My gift, though I didn't fully understand how to interpret all the nuances yet, was telling me to trust his advice for the time being. I guess you could say that staying with him seemed to be the less risky of the two options."

"Did he tell you why he created you?" Alice asked.

Cora's forehead wrinkled slightly as she considered the answer to Alice's question. "He spoke of preparing us for another master, but he never gave us any details. He also spoke of a time in the future when we would be free to go our own way…but I think that happened sooner than he intended."

That sounded familiar. He had told Alice that after she was trained she would be free to go off on her own, and that she would meet others and would not want to stay with him. I decided his plans for Alice and for Cora must have been the same.

"What about Nick's two friends?" Alice asked. "Do you remember them?"

"Jesse and Fernando?" Cora looked confused and glanced over at Eli and back to Alice. "I thought Eli already told you about them."

"He mentioned them," Alice told her, "but they aren't who I meant. There were at least two others who were in on his plan. I heard them arguing right before I was changed. They made Nick go somewhere and 'remove evidence' before he changed me; I think Nick may have erased your memories of the other two."

"I don't have any gaps in my memory," Cora insisted, adamantly shaking her head. Then her expression changed as she seemed to consider the possibility, and she turned to look at Eli. "At least…I'm not aware of any. Eli?"

"I wouldn't be able to tell for sure without scanning through your memories from that time period," he told her.

She snarled at him.

Eli rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored her reaction and continued as if he hadn't heard her. "I can't see anything wrong with your index, but I couldn't see anything wrong with Alice's human index, either, and it had a surprising number of gaps. But based on what Nick's friends said about removing evidence, I would have to say there's a very good chance that you have some memory gaps as well."

Cora's snarling had settled into a low growl and she seemed to relax slightly as it became apparent that Eli did not intend to scan her memories. She sat quietly now, frowning at Eli's assessment. I couldn't blame her; I wouldn't have liked being told that I had gaps in my memory either, and I wouldn't have liked anyone sifting through my memories.

"You wouldn't be able to recover the missing memories even if I let you do a scan, right?" Cora asked him.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "If your gaps are like Alice's, then those memories are completely gone."

"Good," she said with a satisfied nod, visibly relaxing. "I don't want you rummaging around in my head any more than you've already done, and I'm fairly certain I wouldn't want to relive whatever has been deleted anyway. I wish he had deleted all of it. You're the lucky one," she added, turning to Alice. "You were very fortunate indeed that he was not there when you awoke."

"Yes, I'm glad things turned out as they did," Alice agreed. "Nick also said he was planning to meet 'the yearlings' at a certain time and place. We thought he might have been referring to you, Jesse, and Fernando. Were you supposed to meet him somewhere when he disappeared?"

"Yes. I suppose he might have called us that. We were all roughly a year old. We were told to wait for him at a certain place in the woods. We waited for three days, thinking it might be some sort of test, but he never showed up, and that's when we decided to venture out on our own. We split up, going in different directions, trying to increase our chances of slipping past any Volturi spies undetected. I headed northeast, Jesse headed west, and Fernando was planning to go back to Spain."

"Did you find any signs of Volturi spies?" I asked.

"I don't think so; I'm not sure there ever were any. I did encounter the scent of an unfamiliar vampire about fifty miles from our designated meeting location, but I didn't try to follow the trail; I assumed it was Volturi at the time and I avoided it. I left the area immediately as soon as we decided our master wasn't returning."

"That scent belonged to James," Edward informed her.

"That makes sense," she said. "But how can you be so sure?"

"You were just remembering the scent, and I recognized it."

"Oh." Cora nodded. "I think 'Nick' probably made up the threat of Volturi spies just to keep us there."

"That's possible," Carlisle said. "He would have needed some way to keep the three of you from massacring human populations, some way to keep you dependent on him so that you wouldn't leave until you had sufficient control to avoid detection."

"Would you care to tell us about your diet while you were with Nick?" Edward prompted, possibly in response to something in her thoughts.

"That was the worst part," she said wryly. "Animal blood. It baffles me that this many of you would choose it voluntarily."

I was stunned at the revelation that she once lived on animal blood. I realized that this must have been what Eli had overheard in her thoughts during her previous visit. Were Cora, Jesse, and Fernando the ones Nick had been referring to when he told Alice that she would eventually meet others who shared her respect for human life? Cora didn't seem very respectful of it now…

"I suppose I can understand why it would appeal to you and Eli, and maybe the empath," Cora continued,"but the rest of you?" She glanced around at us incredulously, and Jake shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I have to wonder…have you ever _tasted_ human blood?" She was still looking at Edward and seemed genuinely curious, but before he could answer, her expression shifted to one of alarm.

What occurred next all happened very quickly. Cora's head whipped around to face Jacob, who looked decidedly angry. Cora leaped from her chair, hissing at him, and dropped into a defensive crouch. Renesmee reached for Jake's face, probably attempting to calm him, but before she could touch him, Edward had launched himself between the two of them and pushed Renesmee off the love seat and toward the wall. And Jake phased, right there in my living room.

The force of his shift had rendered the love seat a pile of broken wood and torn fabric. Alice had been knocked off the arm of the love seat where she had been perched; she quickly righted herself, landing on her feet, and stood gaping at him in surprise. Jake's wolf-head had hit the chandelier on the ceiling and it had come crashing down to the floor. The floor was covered in shattered glass.

"Jake, no!" I screamed, jumping between him and Cora. I briefly considered shielding him but decided that would make her more nervous and more likely to attack. I tried to place my hand on his shoulder to calm him, but he shrugged away from me and stood glaring and growling at Cora.

Carlisle and Alice came and stood next to me, creating a barrier between Cora and Jacob. Edward released Renesmee and flashed over to stand with us but faced Cora.

"He's not going to hurt you," Edward told her.

"I can judge that for myself," she hissed, "and his intentions are decidedly not friendly."

"He was angered by your attitude about feeding on humans but he wouldn't have attacked. He felt threatened when you went into a crouch and he phased without thinking; it was purely instinct. Please sit back down, and I'll ask him to leave."

Cora stood slowly, continuing to watch Jake, and hesitantly stepped back to her chair and sat down.

Renesmee had gone to Jake and was rubbing his head soothingly. He nuzzled her arm and then sat back on his haunches, knocking a small table over in the process. He whimpered an apology as he looked over at me.

"It's okay, Jake," Edward told him. "We can replace the furniture." He pinched the bridge of his nose and turned to Cora, who was looking considerably more relaxed. "Jake says he's sorry for making you feel threatened. He's says he's going to leave now so that you'll be more comfortable."

I cleared a path to the back door, moving furniture to minimize the damage he might do on the way out.

Jake started to follow Nessie to the door, and then stopped suddenly and made a noise that was somewhere between a bark and a whine.

"Ness, he wants you to get a change of clothes for him," Edward translated. "He's used up the stash he had in the woods."

"Okay." Renesmee dashed up the stairs and returned carrying a bag. She opened the back door and held it for Jake, who managed to knock over a kitchen chair on his way out despite my efforts to have everything moved aside.

Jake ducked his head down to fit through the opening and began squeezing through the door, which had not been made with horse-sized wolves in mind. A few stray pieces of fur fluttered to the floor as the door facing rubbed against both sides of his body as he forced himself through.

"Why doesn't he just change back into human form before leaving?" Cora asked. "Wouldn't that be easier?" She continued to stare after Jake, looking confused.

"This is what he was wearing earlier," Alice said, holding up some tattered fragments from Jake's shirt and pants. "The clothes don't phase with him. He's going into the woods to change."

I saw understanding dawn in Cora's eyes and she threw her head back and cackled with laughter. She laughed harder and harder, her entire body shaking as she tried unsuccessfully to regain control of herself.

I looked up at Edward and saw that he was smiling and seemed to be trying not to laugh himself.

"I'm sorry," Cora said between bursts of laughter. "I was just imagining that big wolf turning back into a naked and embarrassed human boy. He doesn't seem nearly as menacing that way!" She laughed some more, and Eli and Alice joined in. I felt bad for Jake; I knew he was probably upset with himself over his lack of control, and he had probably heard the laughter coming from the house as he headed into the woods. But Nessie was with him, and she would soothe him.

Finally, the laughter subsided, and Cora asked, "So where were we? Oh yes, I was asking about your diet. I didn't anticipate such a strong reaction from him; I was truly just curious."

"I don't think any of us anticipated that reaction," Edward said. "You felt threatened because of what your gift was telling you, and your reaction to what you were sensing triggered an instinctive response for Jacob. He didn't even think about phasing; it just happened. I assure you, though, we wouldn't have let him hurt you."

"No, and you wouldn't have let me hurt him, either," she smiled knowingly

"No," Edward agreed, "we wouldn't. He's my daughter's mate, and a member of our family."

"So, have you?" she asked.

"Tasted human blood?" Edward finished her sentence for those of us who couldn't read her mind. "Yes, most of us have. It is not without effort that we abstain, but we all share a reverence for humanity."

Cora shook her head slowly as if to say it still made no sense to her. "Well, I'm glad Eli found you," she said, glancing over at him fondly. "Your hunting practices seem to suit him well. I suppose I should have suggested it to him earlier. I knew how his talent bothered him when he hunted, but honestly, it never occurred to me that the abuse I was subjected to would be appealing to him."

"Could you tell us a little more about your experience with Nick, like how he enforced the diet and how you came to reject it?" Carlisle asked.

Cora took a deep breath. "Nick told us that we would naturally find human blood the most appealing, but that the Volturi would destroy us if they found any evidence that we had been consuming it. He also would occasionally remind us that we all used to be human and that we wouldn't want to become murderers, but there was always something off in his expression when he would tell us that, and I was getting oddly mixed signals from my gift. I could tell he wasn't trying to harm me, but that he wasn't giving me the advice most beneficial for me either. Our diet was limited to the deer and black bear that he herded into our part of the woods. I never smelled human blood until our 'master' disappeared and I went out on my own. Up until that point, he had almost convinced me that I didn't want to become a murderer, but once I had tasted real blood I knew my creator had been lying to us. Our eyes had gradually turned golden, like yours, but my creator's were always red, and mine returned to their natural red once I began following my instincts and accepting my true nature. I don't think he ever shared our diet."

"He told me he had never tried animal blood," Alice said.

"That makes sense. He never fed with us; he always claimed he'd already had his fill before chasing a group of animals our way. I'm not sure why he was holding out on us or how it could have benefited him for us to feed from animals."

"Well, they had at least three newborns there," Edward began, seeming to be thinking it through as he spoke, "and they were planning on adding at least one more, so as Carlisle said earlier, they needed a way to keep all of you contained enough to prevent you from exposing your true nature to humans. The Volturi really would have come to destroy you if that had happened. Nick would have needed a way to control you enough that you wouldn't attract attention. Since they were keeping you hidden in the forest, perhaps it was simply more convenient to have you feed from animals rather than risk taking you into a populated area and teaching you how to cover your tracks."

"I suppose that could have been it," Cora said, "but he really seemed to want us to buy into it. It was like he thought he could make us prefer animals somehow."

"It does seem very odd," Carlisle said. "I thought I was unique for many decades until I met the Denali clan. Most of our kind find our lifestyle bizarre; it's very peculiar that someone who doesn't adhere to our diet would force it upon those he had created. I'm not sure where he would have even gotten the idea unless he had met one of us or one of the Denalis."

"Well, Edward said earlier that he might have met you in Chicago," Cora pointed out.

"Even if I did cross paths with him and told him about my diet, why would he force it upon a bunch of newborns if he didn't embrace it himself?" Carlisle wondered, rubbing his chin.

"Maybe he was conducting some sort of experiment," I suggested.

"To see how our diet would affect talented newborns?" Carlisle asked.

I just shrugged. I hadn't thought through a purpose for experimentation.

"That's an interesting idea, Bella," Edward murmured, squeezing my shoulder. He and Carlisle looked contemplative, but Alice plunged ahead with her next question, ending that line of discussion.

"Cora, you said earlier that Nick said he was preparing you for another master," Alice began. "What did he do to prepare you?"

"He taught us to fight." She shrugged. "There wasn't much else. He deprived us of real blood and made us fight each other. We learned how to reattach limbs so that they would heal more quickly. He said we needed to be able to defend ourselves against the Volturi spies before we could leave. He warned us about the special powers the Volturi have and their limitations, but I'm still sorting through what I was taught, trying to figure out which things are true and which were lies."

"He taught you to fight by pitting you against other newborns?" I asked. "How would that have prepared you to fight mature vampires like the Volturi?" It didn't make any sense. I remembered how Jasper had needed to train the rest of the family on fighting newborns when Victoria was after me. Even with my limited experience, I knew that fighting a strong but unskilled newborn required a technique very different from what would be needed to defend oneself against a mature, talented, highly-trained member of the Volturi guard.

"Apparently, it prepared her pretty well," Eli said, glancing over at his creator with a look of respect. "Cora trained me, and you've seen me fight."

"Neither of you have ever trained with anyone else?" Carlisle asked.

"He trained us individually, too," Cora said. "We would practice with him, and he would show us a new technique, then he would have us practice using it against each other. But other than that, no, we never needed to train with anyone else. I've always been able to defend myself, and I can adapt to different types of opponents."

"Some of Eli's skill comes from his gift," Edward said. "But for you to be able to defend yourself against him in practice fights beyond the newborn year shows considerably more skill than what you could have gained from fighting newborns. I wonder if you may have had more training, perhaps with Nick's two friends, but then your memories of them were erased."

"But the skills I had gained somehow remained?"

"Possibly," Edward answered. "When Alice awoke, she still remembered how to speak, though she couldn't remember learning to speak. Some learned behaviors can stay with a person even after they've forgotten being taught."

"Well, if you're right, I'm glad those memories are gone. The training period was not exactly pleasant, and I certainly don't need any more memories of it than what I already have. I wonder if Jesse or Fernando would remember anything… But if certain memories of mine were erased, I guess the same memories would have been erased for them as well."

Edward nodded in agreement.

"What else can you tell us about Jesse and Fernando?" Carlisle asked. "Eli told us about Fernando's talent - how he always seems to make the correct decisions to advance his goals - and we know he was an exchange student from Spain. But we know almost nothing about Jesse. Is he talented too? Did both of them come from asylums?"

"Ah, Jesse." Cora smiled slightly. "He's told me that he has a talent but he has yet to demonstrate it for me. He says it's too dangerous for him to use it openly; he's afraid the Volturi will come after him."

"So what is it?" Alice asked eagerly.

"I don't know." Cora laughed. "He's never told me what it is. I'm not entirely convinced he has one. I think perhaps he just didn't want to feel left out, since both Fernando and I have a special ability."

"Do you know where he's from? Was he in an asylum?" Carlisle asked again.

"I'm not sure." She sighed. "He doesn't talk much about himself. He did mention being from Georgia, but I don't know any more than that about his past."

"What about Fernando?" Alice prompted. "Can you tell us anything else about him?"

"He wasn't in an asylum or any sort of hospital. He was a student at North Carolina State University. His disappearance made international news – he learned about it from some newspaper articles he found just a few years ago. When he didn't show up for class it was noticed quickly and there was a big search done for him. The human authorities were baffled by his disappearance, and of course no trace was ever found of him. He is a likeable enough fellow. He's a bit arrogant sometimes, but I've learned to trust his instincts. Even when his choices seem to defy logic, things always seem to work out how he wants them to; he always gets where he wants to be, finds what he wants to find."

"How long has it been since you've seen him?" Eli asked.

"It's been a couple of years now," she answered. "He stops by from time to time. He always seems to be able to find me no matter where I am at the time, and it's usually when I could most use his help. There was one time when a coven of three was angry with me when I had unknowingly hunted in what they considered to be their territory. He showed up just in time to help me fight them off. He said he hadn't been planning to visit, and he didn't have any sense that anything was wrong, but he just randomly decided to go for a run and came across my scent. He's rescued Jesse from precarious circumstances a few times, as well."

"I thought his gift was in making decisions to help him achieve a goal," I said, remembering what Eli had told use earlier. "How did he find you if he wasn't trying to?"

"That's what I meant when I said it was sort of an indistinct talent," Eli said. "He doesn't usually think about trying to make the right choices to help advance his goals. Things just work out for him. He just ends up where he needs to be. I think he has a desire to protect Cora and Jesse, and somehow he always seems to be nearby when they need his assistance."

"Can you give us any other examples of his talent?" Carlisle asked.

"Once, we planned to meet in Wisconsin in July," Cora said. "We hadn't made any plans more specific than that, but he showed up there the same day I did, on the outskirts of the same town. I didn't have to look for him or wait for him, and he didn't have to wait for me or put any effort into finding me. We just crossed paths when he wanted us to. There was also a short time when the three of us formed a coven and traveled together. Fernando served as our leader most of the time, but if you asked him what his plans were or where we were going next, he couldn't tell you. But somehow he always led us right to the most delicious blood in the most inconspicuous places, and there was always enough to sate all three of us. He couldn't tell you how he did it; he doesn't know. It's just uncanny."

"Why didn't the three of you stay together?" Edward asked.

"I guess I don't do too well with letting someone else lead." Cora chuckled. "Jesse doesn't either. Each of us is just too independent. We all three got on one another's nerves, and one day Fernando announced that we needed to go our separate ways again. And Jesse and I both knew he was right. I think if we had stayed together too long we might have killed each other."

"That was before my transformation?" Eli asked. "I don't recall you mentioning that before."

"Right, it was shortly after we went our separate ways again that I created you. I missed the companionship of the others, and I thought perhaps I could create someone who would better understand me." She gave Eli a wry look. "I guess you understood me a little _too_ well."

"I forgave you long ago, Cora," Eli told her. "I just need to be on my own. I value my independence too."

"Well," Cora said, looking around at us, "I think I've told you everything I know about my newborn years. Did any of you have any more questions for me?"

"You don't remember anything about any other newborns? Nick didn't create anyone else?" Alice asked.

"No," she answered, "well, except for that one who escaped. I never met her but I heard my 'master' refer to 'the redhead who escaped' once. He was muttering about it to himself, and I asked him what he meant. He said there had been another newborn but she left and never came back. He implied that the Volturi probably captured her and she wasn't able to return."

"The redhead was Victoria, James' mate" I told her. "I recognized her voice when Eli was narrating Alice's memories for us. She did seem to have a talent for escaping. I'm not surprised she got away from Nick."

"I thought you said that Victoria wouldn't have known anything about Nick," Cora accused Edward. "It sounds like he created her."

"She had no thoughts of Nick either time that I met her," Edward replied. "And we don't know if Nick created her or if it was one of his two friends. She most likely left as soon as her transformation process was complete; she may not have even seen Nick. Regardless, she's gone now, and speculating on what she might have known will do us no good."

"You're right, of course," Cora conceded. "In any case, I think you know why I came to meet you." She looked from Edward to Carlisle, and back to Edward. "Your encounters with the Volturi have confirmed my worst suspicions. More of the things that I was told as a newborn have turned out to be true than what I had previously believed. I'm tired of living in fear of them. If you ever decide to confront them. . .well, I'm not going to hide anymore. With your talents, and with your alliance with the wolves, you stand a better chance at defeating them than any coven I've ever met. If you decide to fight them, I will fight with you."

"We appreciate that offer," Carlisle said. "But we have no intention of fighting them. At the moment, they seem to be trying to appease us, and we much prefer a peaceful solution."

"I understand," she said. "But I'm committed now. You know of me. You know of my talent and you know my history. If you fight them and lose, they will know I exist and come after me, either for my talent or to punish me for siding with you against them. I know Eli is willing to fight with you too, and I can talk to Jesse and Fernando the next time I see them. Perhaps I could persuade them as well."

"As Carlisle said, we hope the situation doesn't come to a fight," Edward told her. "But we would certainly appreciate your assistance if it ever becomes necessary."

Cora stayed for a while longer, and we told her more about Aro's recent visit, how he had adopted our diet, and how he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. We explained that even though we were fairly certain that he had ulterior motives, they seemed to be long-term goals, and we assured her that we were remaining vigilant even though the Volturi seemed to be trying to avoid confrontation for the time being.

After she and Eli left, we cleaned up the mess Jake had left when he phased, and Alice and Carlisle went home.

"Cora was . . . not quite what I was expecting," I told Edward as we snuggled up together on the sofa. He wrapped his arms around me and I leaned into his chest, breathing deeply to take in his scent.

"What were you expecting?" Edward asked, sounding amused.

"I don't know. I guess I imagined her being older . . . and bossier."

Edward laughed into my hair. "She is bossier with Eli when they're alone. She was on her best behavior with us today. She wanted to make a good impression; she didn't want to get on our bad side. So how old do you think she looks?"

"About twenty?" I guessed.

Edward laughed again. "She was twenty-seven when she was changed. She does look younger, though. I think she could pass for a high school student much more easily than Emmett does."

"I doubt she'd want to go to high school."

"No, probably not. She thinks it's pretty strange that we all go to college."

I nodded. "She just seemed friendlier than I expected after the way Eli had talked about her. I guess her thoughts just get on his nerves?"

"Yes, that's mostly it. Their relationship is interesting. She wants so much to be the one in control, but he nearly always has the upper hand since he can hear her thoughts. She's never been very successful in getting him to do what she wants. And yet he fears her, in a way. She can react violently at times, so he tries to keep her appeased. And as he told her, he does very much value his independence. He has a certain respect for her, and he cares for her well-being, but he can only tolerate her in small doses."

"She seemed very protective of him, and there were times when she was looking at him very fondly, like she was proud of him. She still has feelings for him, doesn't she?"

"You're very observant," he told me. "She does care about him. She created him, and there's a special bond there. She still feels responsible for him in a way. And she wants him to be happy . . . she wishes it could be with her, but she's accepted that that's not going to happen."

"Do you think Jake and Nessie will be home soon?" I asked, tilting my head back so that I could see his face.

"Why do you ask?" He gave me that crooked grin that could still make me melt.

"Why do you think?" I raised one eyebrow, growing hopeful from his playful response.

He brushed his lips against mine. "Ness said they wouldn't be back before Sunday morning," he murmured before moving down my neck. "I have you all to myself for at least the next twenty-four hours." His cool breath tickled my ear and sent chills down my spine.

I pulled him closer and wove my fingers into the back of his hair, all thoughts of Cora, Nick, and the Volturi gone from my mind. It had been a long week, and I was more than ready to enjoy some time in Edward's arms.

* * *

**A/N: I'd love to hear what you're thinking! Did you like the Bella/Nessie time at the beginning of this chapter? What do you think of Cora? **


	29. Thanksgiving

Chapter 29 – Thanksgiving

It felt a little odd to be standing in this kitchen again. I looked around at the familiar outdated cabinets as I set the groceries down on the counter, and I smiled to myself as the ancient linoleum floor caught my eye. Alice had wanted to help us renovate when we first moved in, but she had lost that argument. I had always liked this house as it was. It had character.

I felt a twinge against my shield as Edward placed another bag of groceries next to mine. I pushed my shield aside; I had been trying to do that more frequently, even when I wasn't thinking about anything specific that needed to be shared. I knew how much Edward enjoyed those glimpses into my mind, even if it made little sense to me why he found my random thoughts so interesting.

"Do you miss this house?" he asked, snaking his arms around my waist. I shivered as I felt his breath against the back of my neck, and I tilted my head slightly to the side in anticipation of the kisses that followed. Edward's lips trailed up the side of my neck, and I sighed in contentment.

"No, home is wherever you are," I answered. "I haven't missed this place at all. I'm glad we kept it, though. It's a convenient place for everyone to gather."

I leaned back into his embrace, remembering Charlie's excitement when I told him we could visit for Thanksgiving. He had called to invite us at Sue's urging, not really expecting that we could come since I had told him earlier that we would try to visit during winter break. I had been about to tell him that it would be better for us to come after finals were over, but Jake and Ness were in the room and overheard the invitation – one look at their hopeful faces and I knew we would be making two trips to Washington before the end of the year rather than just one. Renesmee missed her Grandpa Charlie, and it had been months since Jacob had seen his dad.

Edward had expressed concern about going to Forks on a day when people who knew us in high school were likely to be back in town for the holiday, so I had asked if they would mind having it at our house in La Push. Sue had agreed, insisting it would be no trouble for her to transport the food.

And so I found myself in my old kitchen, alone with Edward, while Jacob and Renesmee were at Paul and Rachel's house, visiting with them and Billy. It was just as things had been a few months earlier, back before we moved. Much had happened in those few months, though – my adjustment to college life, the bizarre visit from Aro, and the recovery of some of Alice's human memories. I'd had a lot on my mind lately, and it was nice to return "home" to the Olympic Peninsula, which somehow felt far removed from our recent worries about the Volturi. With the two wolf packs, La Push was probably the safest place on earth from vampire attacks.

"We can't get complacent, though," Edward murmured in my ear. "If they decide to come after us, they could choose La Push as easily as anywhere else. They aren't bound by the treaty with the wolves."

I was a bit startled by his comment, having nearly forgotten that my mind was unshielded, and the shield snapped quickly back into place. "I know," I answered. "You're right. They could choose La Push just because they would know we would least expect it."

Edward chuckled and pulled me closer. "You forgot I was listening, didn't you?" he asked. "It seems to be requiring less and less concentration for you to keep it aside."

"It is," I agreed. "It's getting easier with practice. One of these days you're going to get tired of all my random thoughts and you'll have to remind me to turn off the noise."

"Never," he assured me.

"Hey, Mom! Hey, Dad!" Renesmee called as she entered the house and came into the kitchen. "Is there anything I can help with?"

"No, I think we've got it under control," I told her. "Charlie and Sue should be here in about an hour with the rest of the food. Where's Jake?"

"I thought I'd give him and Billy some time to catch up," she said. "He hasn't seen his dad in a while and I know they've missed each other. And I kind of thought Grandpa Charlie might be here by now."

"Sue called earlier and they're running a little late," Edward told her. "They'll be on their way as soon as the turkey is done."

Renesmee made a face that conveyed exactly how disgusting the thought of cooked turkey was to her. She stood and watched us for a few minutes as we worked on preparing the food, and then decided to go for a walk to pass the time until the others were expected to arrive.

* * *

Edward and I were still preparing food in the kitchen when I heard Nessie slip back into the house about forty-five minutes later. I was expecting her to come back into the kitchen, but instead, I heard music coming from the piano in the other room. I immediately recognized the tune: it was the song she had been working on for Jacob. She was hoping to surprise him with it for Christmas. She was talented at composing, just like her father, and I enjoyed hearing her play.

Jacob's song was cheerful and upbeat, but she didn't seem to be playing with her normal passion, and I noticed that she was playing a little more slowly than usual. She came to the part I knew she was still working on – this part had been different every time she played – and the song took a sad turn.

The sadness and wistfulness in those notes caught me by surprise; I had _never_ heard her play anything so melancholy. I wondered what could have put her into such a somber mood. Had she received bad news about Chloe's mother? Had something happened while she was on her walk or at Rachel and Paul's house earlier in the day?

I looked at Edward, wondering what he was hearing in her thoughts. He had been working on a somewhat elaborate fruit display, and had paused midway through carving a cantaloupe, turning to look at me. I could see in his eyes that he was considering going to talk to her. I felt the same urge, but I knew Edward had an advantage in having already heard her thoughts.

_Go to her_, I thought to him, briefly pushing my shield aside. _I can finish up here._

He nodded, kissed me briefly, and whispered, "She'll be okay." He left the knife on the countertop and went to join his daughter at the piano.

I knew he was sitting next to her when I heard the descant he was adding. It perfectly complemented Renesmee's melody, but added a spirit of liveliness that counterbalanced the sadness in her notes. I felt love for my husband swell in my heart as I smiled at his way of telling our daughter to "cheer up."

I couldn't resist peeking around the doorframe to see them sitting there together at the piano, side by side on the piano bench with their backs to me, her long hair flowing in bronze ringlets that cascaded down her back, and his, almost the exact same shade, sticking up in its usual disarray. They looked like siblings, perhaps even twins, not at all like father and daughter. But despite her physical appearance and her emotional and mental maturity, she was chronologically only a little more than ten years old and in many was still very much our child.

The music stopped abruptly, and Nessie leaned over against Edward as he put his arm around her and then silently pulled her to an embrace. I could smell the saltiness of the tears that were beginning to spill onto his shoulder. I quietly returned to my food preparation, feeling somewhat ashamed at having intentionally spied on them during such a private moment even though I knew she'd probably show me the entire conversation later.

"It's something we all have to learn to deal with," I heard him tell her softly. "We're going to outlive all of our human family and friends."

There was a pause, and then he responded to her mental question. "Well, I've mostly dealt with it by trying not to allow myself to become strongly attached to any of them, but that changed when I met your mother. My way is not necessarily the best, though, because then you would be missing out on all the relationships that I know you enjoy so much."

He continued after another pause. "Chloe will be okay. It will be difficult for her when her mother dies, but humans are very resilient. Look at Jacob – he lost his mother at an early age, and he misses her still, but he still enjoys life." There was another brief pause. "He's known for several years that his father is in poor health and is not likely to outlive him. It will be difficult when it happens, but he'll always have you. And he'll always have us."

"I love you, Dad," Renesmee murmured, "and I'm glad you're immortal."

Edward laughed softly. "I love you too, sweetheart. And I'm glad of that too, now that I have you and your mother."

"Is that Charlie and Sue's car I hear coming?" she asked. "It sounds like your old Volvo." He must have nodded affirmatively, because she continued, "My eyes are probably still red and puffy. I'm going to go wash my face."

Edward slipped back into the kitchen to fill me in. "Nothing bad has happened," he assured me. "She's just been thinking a lot about Chloe's mother and it's made her start thinking more about the mortality of others, like your parents and Billy. She sees them getting older and feels helpless that there's nothing she can do about it."

I nodded, pushing my shield aside again, knowing that he still worried about me having to deal with those same issues. But I had known when I chose this life that I was going to have to leave behind all of my human friends and family; I considered myself very lucky to have the extra time with them that I've already had. I felt it was more difficult for Renesmee, because she didn't have the human background that I did. She had never lived a normal human life where death was normal and expected. I still vaguely remembered Gran's death; I had been sad to lose her but she had lived a long and full life and I knew her suffering in the hospital was over. I had grieved but had moved on with my life. The situation with Chloe's mother was the first time Renesmee had been confronted with the reality of human frailness and mortality in a way that affected someone she cared about. Human death due to illness or old age might be less dramatic and terrifying than a Volturi attack, but it was also more inevitable.

"Thank you," Edward said, kissing my forehead and pulling me close.

"For what?" I asked, distracted by my thoughts.

"For letting me in. You're right; I do still worry about what it will be like for you when you lose your parents, but I always feel better when I know what you're thinking."

We were interrupted by a knock at the door – Charlie and Sue had arrived. We helped them carry in all the food Sue had prepared. Sue then made herself at home in the kitchen, finishing up some last-minute details. She insisted she didn't need my help, so I joined Edward and Charlie in the family room.

"Where's Nessie?" Charlie asked, glancing around the room as if he might find her hiding behind a piece of furniture.

"I think she went to the bathroom to freshen up," I said. "She should be out soon."

"Oh. Well, it's good to see you, Bells. And you, too, Edward," Charlie said. "Did you guys have a good flight?"

"Yes, it was uneventful," I answered.

"Grandpa!" Renesmee exclaimed, hurrying into the room at human pace.

Charlie stood up, greeted her with a hug, and then stepped back to look at her.

"Hey, baby doll, what's wrong?" he asked, clearly not missing the puffy redness that remained around her eyes.

"Nothing; I'm fine." She forced a smile, and he gave her a look that said he wasn't buying it. "Really, nothing bad has happened," she insisted. "I was just thinking about some things."

Charlie looked to Edward and me, seeming to hope we would provide a more adequate explanation. Edward exchanged a glance with Nessie, and then told Charlie, "She has a friend at school whose mother is terminally ill, and it's caused her to be thinking more about the mortality of some of her family members."

"Mortality?" Charlie's brow furrowed and he looked over at Nessie. "You're worried about me dying? I think I've got a few good years left." He smiled at her.

She reached out and held her palm to the side of his face, and his eyes widened slightly as he began to see what she was showing him.

"No!" Edward said sharply, startling all of us. "That's not an option, Nessie, for a number of reasons. He wouldn't want that."

"I know, Dad. I didn't really mean to suggest it," she said. "I was just showing him my feelings and the thought just sort of crept in."

"Edward's right, you know," Charlie told her, sitting down on the couch. "I don't think I could handle that. I'm not good at dealing with change, and besides, I don't _want_ to live forever. My mother always used to say that death is a part of life, and it is - for most of us, anyway. Sure, I miss my parents and grandparents, but I never expected them to outlive me. I don't want you worrying about me. I'm going to enjoy however many years I have left, and when the time comes for me to go, you just let me go, okay?"

Renesmee nodded and asked, "Can we talk about something more pleasant now?"

"Yeah, sure, " Charlie quickly agreed. "That turkey sure smells good." He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, clearly enjoying the scents wafting into the room from the kitchen.

Renesmee made a sound of disgust, and Charlie opened his eyes and laughed at her.

"That bad, huh?" he asked, shaking his head. "Hey, Bella, do I smell homemade rolls?"

"Yes, you do," I told him, smiling. "I used Gran's old recipe. You said something last year about how you missed those rolls at Thanksgiving, and I found her cookbook at your house not long after that. I've been planning to surprise you."

Just then Jacob came in with Seth, and not far behind them was Leah with her husband, Cody, and their baby, Sophie. I was surprised to see Leah since she usually avoided any family gatherings that included the vampire branch of the family. I suspected Sue had talked her into coming and bringing Sophie; it seemed that Sue could never get enough time with her granddaughter.

Leah carried a large diaper bag on one shoulder and held her baby against the other. Cody was right behind her with the infant carrier and a play yard. Sophie was a little fussy as she was passed around to Sue, Charlie, and Seth, but she settled down and went to sleep soon after Leah placed her in the play yard.

Leah visibly relaxed once it became apparent that the baby was truly asleep.

"It looks like you may actually get to enjoy a meal for once," Cody said to her, rubbing her shoulders.

"Yeah," she said, grinning. "That doesn't happen very often." She gazed lovingly down at Sophie, who had rolled onto her tummy and stuck her rear end in the air, one tiny fist grasping the well-worn blanket that had been placed in the makeshift crib with her. The child's back rose and fell gently with each breath.

Edward, Nessie, and I were careful to keep our distance from the baby, knowing that Leah would be nervous just having her in the same room with us. I wondered what Sue had said to her to persuade her to come.

"Mom says the food's ready!" Seth announced. "Plates are at the end of the counter."

"Bella?" Charlie asked as we filed into the kitchen. "What is _that_?" He gestured toward the fruit display.

"It's a fruit display, Dad. You know, like the kind they have on cruise ships?" I answered.

"Did _. . . you_ make that?" He looked astounded. The display _was_ pretty impressive.

"Well, I helped some, but it was really Edward who designed it and put it all together."

"It seems I've spent too much time around Alice," Edward said, looking slightly embarrassed. "I guess this type of display isn't part of the traditional Thanksgiving meal."

We all laughed - even Leah - and several assured him it looked great.

Sue had managed to arrange nine chairs around the table, so Edward and I sat down with the others even though we no longer needed to pretend to eat. Renesmee chose smaller portions, and only selected certain foods. I watched as the rest of the family piled food on their plates. Edward linked his hand with mine beneath the table and we shared a brief smile. I glanced around the table, happy that everyone seemed to be enjoying the meal. They were all busy chewing, so no one spoke for a moment.

Charlie, who was sitting next to me, glanced up at me as though he wanted to say something. He finished chewing and swallowed and then whispered, "Bells? You sure we can't get you guys anything? Did you bring… anything… with you?"

"No, Dad, it doesn't work like that," I whispered back. When he looked at me questioningly, I added, "This isn't the best conversation for the dinner table."

He nodded and took another bite. "Can you drink water?" he asked, glancing at the empty spot on the table in front of me where there should have been a plate full of food.

I shook my head. "Can't digest it," I whispered back, wrinkling my nose in disgust as I remembered the one time I had tried a sip out of curiosity. "We could fill up some plates and pretend to eat if it would make you feel better, though."

"No. No, you don't need to do that. No need in wasting good food, I guess. I just feel bad sitting here stuffing my face when you can't enjoy the food too," Charlie said.

"We're fine, Charlie, really," Edward assured him.

"Yeah, we all hunted this morning," Jake added. "They shouldn't be thirsty for a while."

"You…hunt with them?" Charlie asked curiously. He paused, contemplating this new piece of information. "You turn into a wolf to do that, I guess?"

"Yeah," Jake answered, grinning. "I eat Nessie's leftovers."

"Jake!" Leah groaned. "They don't want to hear this! We're trying to _eat_!"

"Hey, just because _you_ like your meat cooked – " Jacob's comment ended abruptly as Renesmee elbowed him in the side. "Sorry," he mumbled, shoveling more food into his mouth.

Sue quickly asked Leah something about Sophie and was able to successfully direct the conversation in other directions – Sophie's latest achievements, Charlie's and Billy's plans to go fishing on Saturday morning, Nessie's college classes, Billy's health. It felt almost like we were a normal family, and that felt good. It was great seeing Seth again, and it was nice seeing Leah truly happy for once. Motherhood suited her well, and it seemed to have softened her a bit. She no longer seemed to have such a negative outlook on everything

Suddenly, I felt Edward squeezing my fingers, and then he pulled his hand from mine and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"What is it?" I asked, growing more concerned as I took in his expression.

"Newton's outside," he announced, standing up. "He recognized Charlie's Volvo and stopped knowing that you would probably be here. He's sitting there trying to figure out what he wants to say to you."

"What's the problem?" Charlie asked. "We'll just tell him Nessie is your sister, right?"

"He can't see _me_, Charlie," Edward said emphatically. "I look _exactly_ the same as I did when I enrolled in Forks High thirteen years ago, pretending to be fifteen."

"Yeah, he might think that was a little odd," Seth said with a grin.

"And he'll notice the changes in Bella," Edward added. "It will raise too many questions for him. He's met Jake before too, and he hasn't aged any either. We all need to go."

"It will be suspicious if I'm not here with my family for Thanksgiving," I pointed out. "It'll be okay. He'll just think I had plastic surgery, like Renee and Phil do."

Edward let out a frustrated sigh. "Fine. I'm taking a nap. Jake and Ness aren't here. Don't shield him; I'll need to monitor his thoughts so we'll know if he begins to suspect anything."

He motioned for Jake and Nessie to follow him and they all dashed up the stairs. I knew we must be nearly out of time for him to have agreed without an argument.

"What if Mike goes up there?" Charlie asked me, suddenly seeming worried.

"He won't find them," I assured him, smiling slightly as I recalled all the times Charlie hadn't found Edward in my bedroom.

Charlie gave me a funny look, but there was a knock at the door before he could say anything.

"This is Sue's house," I told him quietly, popping in the brown contacts I always kept in my purse. "Mike doesn't need to know that Edward and I own it. Can you get the door?"

I picked up Jake's empty plate and glass from the counter and sat back down at the table, so that it would look like I had just finished my meal. Some of the others were finished eating, and a few were working on dessert.

"Hello, Mike," I heard Charlie say.

"Chief Swan," Mike greeted him. "I saw your car outside and I wondered if Bella might be in visiting for the holidays. I haven't seen her since high school. I hope I'm not interrupting . . . I just wanted to say hi."

"Bella!" Charlie called loudly.

I went to the door as Charlie returned to the table, and there was Mike, looking the same and yet different. His face was a little thinner, his shoulders had broadened, and he had developed a bit of a paunch, though he still had an athletic build. His hair was clipped short and he was dressed in khakis and a pullover shirt.

"Hi, Mike," I said, trying to look surprised to see him.

"Bella…" His eyes widened in surprise as he took in my appearance. "Bella, um, you look great. _Really_ great. Amazing." He continued to stare at me.

"Yeah, um, I had a little work done. You really think I look okay?" I hoped my acting skills had improved. I thought I sounded believable.

"Yeah! But you looked great before, too." He shook his head, not understanding. "Why would you put yourself through that? Did Cullen..." He trailed off as his face contorted in anger.

"No! No, Edward actually didn't want me to change anything, but I'd never been happy with my nose, and I just always felt like I looked so plain. It took me a while to convince him it was really what I wanted, but he finally said he just wanted me to be happy. We had the money, so I decided to just go ahead and do something about it." I shrugged, hoping I had been convincing enough. "I don't look _that_ different, do I?"

"No, I guess not. Anyway, it's good to see you again."

"So what are you doing out here in La Push?"

"I was just out driving around, thinking. I had to get away from my parents' house; they're just... Never mind, you don't need to hear about that." He sighed. "Anyway, I was just driving around, thinking of maybe heading down to the beach – I figured it would probably be deserted today. Then I saw your dad's car parked at this house. I remembered my dad saying that Charlie was spending Thanksgiving with his wife's family in La Push, so when I saw his car I decided to stop, thinking maybe you'd be here. I haven't seen you in forever." He smiled, obviously happy to see me again.

We were still standing in the doorway and I realized it would be rude, and a little odd, not to invite him in, so I opened the door wider and gestured for him to follow me into the living room. I noticed that Sue and Leah had disappeared into the kitchen and I could hear them starting to clean up. Charlie, Seth, and Cody were still sitting at the dining room table, talking and joking around, not seeming to pay any attention to Mike or me.

"So, you're an attorney now?" I asked him as we sat down, just to make conversation.

"Yeah, in Port Angeles. I specialize in wills and estates. It's not as boring as it sounds. Really. I enjoy it."

"That's good."

"Everybody should have a will, especially if they have children." His eyes narrowed and he looked up at me suddenly. "Do you have a will? I could help you with that. It's important to designate guardianship for your child, just in case the unthinkable should happen..."

"Oh, we already have wills. We're good there. Thanks, though."

"Where is your... daughter? It's a girl, right?"

"Yes, she's spending the holiday with my mom in Florida. She says she hates it up here - too cold and rainy - so when Mom offered her a weekend in sunny Florida she was so excited that I let her go. Charlie was disappointed, but he just saw her a few weeks ago when he came out to visit, so..."

Mike nodded in understanding. "So where's Edward? Did he go with her?" He looked just the tiniest bit too hopeful.

"No, he's here." I chuckled, hoping my acting skills were better than they used to be. "He was exhausted from the drive here from the airport, and then after he got his belly full of Sue's turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy, he couldn't hold his eyes open anymore. He's in the other room taking a nap."

"Oh. Yeah, that _is_ a long drive here from Seattle. That's too bad. I haven't seen any of the Cullens since high school. It would've been nice to see him again. I wish you guys could have come to the reunion."

"Yeah, it just didn't work out this time. Thanks for sending me that email and letting me know what everyone's doing."

"How long are you going to be in town?" he asked. "Maybe we could get a group together. Some of the others are probably in visiting their parents this weekend too. I could make some phone calls…maybe set something up for tomorrow night? We could see a movie or something. What do you say?"

"A movie?" I was stalling for time, trying to come up with an excuse as to why I would be unavailable for the entire weekend I was in town. As much as I would have loved to see Angela, I knew that meeting with more old friends would increase our risk of exposure; it simply wasn't safe.

"Yeah, well, I guess that last group outing to see a movie didn't work out so well, did it?" His face reddened slightly and he ran his hand through his hair.

My throat burned as his blush drew my attention. He certainly never smelled this appealing when I was human. I forced myself to focus, trying to remember what he was referring to.

"You don't remember?" he asked, apparently responding to the confusion on my face. "We went to see _Crosshairs_, just you, me, and that kid from La Push. What was his name – Caleb Brown? Caleb Black?

"Oh, Jacob," I answered. It was starting to come back to me. "Jacob Black. Yeah, and you got sick, right?"

"Yeah." He grimaced. "That was so embarrassing. I promise it'll be a real group this time."

"Well, it wasn't your fault that everyone cancelled at the last minute," I remarked, unsure what he was implying. I was still struggling to recall the details of that outing.

Mike's blush had become more prominent, and his heart rate had slightly accelerated. I stared at him, trying to decipher his reaction. He had scooted a little closer to me on the couch during the course of our conversation, and his eyes were beginning to look unfocused. I heard a growl from upstairs, and Seth immediately scooted his chair loudly to mask the sound.

"Yeah, um, it kind of was," Mike mumbled, still staring at me blankly.

"What do you mean?" I asked as I began to realize that he was too close and had been inhaling my scent. He would probably tell me anything I wanted to know right now.

"I kind of, um, asked certain people not to come. I couldn't convince Angela, though…It was pure luck that she got sick. I wanted it to be like a real date. If that kid hadn't been there and I hadn't got sick, do you think…"

"Hey, man, you want any turkey or anything?" Seth asked Mike loudly, interrupting him and rescuing me from having to respond to Mike's question. "We have plenty of leftovers."

"Um, no, thanks," Mike answered, standing up and shaking his head as if to clear it. "No, I'm stuffed. I just finished eating with my parents."

"Are you sure?" Seth asked. "We have lots of dessert too."

"No, I'd really better be going. I promised Mom I'd help repair some shelving in the store this afternoon. I just wanted to stop in and say hi. I didn't mean to intrude on your family meal."

I suspected that Mike was as relieved as I was by Seth's interruption which had spared him from hearing my response to his unfinished question. He appeared eager to leave now, embarrassed by the turn our conversation had taken, and he was probably wondering what had come over him. I remembered clearly what it had felt like when Edward dazzled me as a human – that sense of frustration at realizing I'd said something I hadn't meant to say out loud.

"It was good seeing you again," I said politely as I followed him back to the front door.

"Yes, it was good seeing you, too," he replied. He began to reach out to me, perhaps to shake my hand, and then reconsidered and placed both hands behind his back.

Charlie had come back into the living room, seeing that Mike was about to leave. "You tell your parents hello for me," he said.

"Yes, sir, Chief Swan." Mike gave a single nod and then stepped out onto the front porch. He turned briefly to wave goodbye. I waved back to him from the door, and he hurried off to his car.

"You handled that wonderfully, love," Edward said, coming up behind me as I closed the door.

"He didn't suspect anything?" I asked. I noticed that Edward still looked tense and wondered what he wasn't telling me.

"He was confused by your change in appearance, but no, he didn't come close to guessing the truth. You were appropriately convincing," he said, placing a gentle kiss on my forehead.

"Relax already," Jacob told him, rolling his eyes. "I don't know why you're so jealous of that guy. Surely you know by now that Bella's chosen you."

"I'm not jealous," Edward insisted.

"Then why did you pulverize the arm of that chair upstairs?" Jacob asked as he started back toward the kitchen, undoubtedly in search of dessert.

"His thoughts were inappropriate," Edward answered.

"You crushed a chair?" Charlie shook his head as he began to follow Jake back to the kitchen. "I'm not even going to ask."

"Was he really that bad?" I asked. "That part at the end was my fault – I think I accidentally dazzled him."

"To be fair, he did make an effort to redirect his thoughts whenever he started fantasizing about you," Edward said. "He just wasn't very good at it. And he had an active imagination throughout his visit; the effects of your natural lures didn't have anything to do with it."

"Well, I'm still sorry about that. I didn't realize what was happening until I heard you growl and then I noticed that look in his eyes."

"You thought I was growling at _you_?" Edward looked appalled.

"Edward, I was dazzling Mike Newton."

He shook his head. "He was affected by your scent, but I wasn't upset about that. You didn't do anything wrong, and you have nothing to apologize for."

"So what were you upset about?" I asked. "Didn't his thoughts become more 'inappropriate' then?"

"Well, yes," he admitted, "but right before that, he was remembering when the three of you went to see that movie. He had a surprisingly clear memory of how you looked that day. You looked so . . . so lifeless."

"Like a zombie?" I asked, attempting to lighten the mood as I remembered the subject of the movie _Crosshairs._

"Yes. Exactly," he said, still completely serious. "You looked like a zombie. And I did that to you, Bella. I'll never forgive myself for what I did. So, I was upset with myself. I was growling at my own stupidity."

"Are there really zombies?" I asked. "I mean, vampires and werewolves are real, so . . . ?"

Edward just rolled his eyes and grinned, and I knew I had finally distracted him from his self-flagellation. Thankfully, that was something that was becoming easier to do.

We returned to the kitchen to join the others, and the rest of our visit was uneventful. I worried that Mike would return with a group, but he didn't come back. On Friday, we all visited Rachel, Paul, and Billy, and the humans enjoyed leftovers from the day before. We said goodbye to Charlie on Friday night, promising a longer visit the next month during winter break.

There were only three more days of classes before finals would begin, and I was excited about completing my first quarter at Dartmouth. Finals would be over at the end of the first week of December, and then it would be time for my trip with Alice. I missed spending time with my sister, and I found myself looking forward to that trip more and more.


	30. Biloxi

Chapter 30: Biloxi

"So how's Charlie?" Alice asked, looking over at me from the passenger's seat as we headed down I-65 through Alabama. We'd been driving for about eight hours and were now only about two hours from Biloxi.

"Charlie's good," I answered, thinking back to the Thanksgiving trip two weeks before. "He seems like he's getting more comfortable with all the supernatural stuff. He was getting Edward to tell him what Sue wanted for Christmas."

"Sounds like he's fitting right in!" Alice's familiar tinkling laughter filled the car.

I nodded, smiling as I thought about the way everyone in the family was always going to Edward and Alice around this time of the year, hoping for gift ideas. Alice had already assured me that Edward would love what I had planned for him.

"Slow down!" she warned suddenly.

"What?" I asked as I applied the brakes. I wondered if there was a wreck up ahead.

"Speed trap in about one mile," she answered.

I slowed down to just below the speed limit and maintained that speed as we passed through Montgomery.

"You were telling me about your trip to La Push," Alice reminded me, once we had left the traffic behind. "So you had a good time?"

"Yes, we had a great visit. Wait," I said, my eyes narrowing at her. "You saw, didn't you? You knew Mike was going to show up?"

"Mike?" she asked innocently. "Mike Newton?" She started giggling. "No, I swear, I wasn't watching. You know I can't see anything with the wolves there, anyway. So he saw you?"

"Yes, he came in for a few minutes. He didn't suspect anything, though. I led him to believe I'd had plastic surgery, and I told him Edward was asleep in another room."

Alice laughed sharply. "So has he changed much?"

"Not really. He looks older, but he acts about the same. It was kind of weird, though, seeing him ten years older. "

"I'm sure," she said. "Probably almost as weird as it was for him to see you looking no older than when you graduated high school."

"Yeah," I agreed. "With some enhancements. He did seem a little taken aback at first, but Edward said he didn't suspect anything – he bought my explanations."

"That's good," she said. "I would have loved to have seen the look on his face."

We both laughed.

"What about Seth – was he there?" she asked.

"Yes, and Leah was too! I was really surprised that she came and brought the baby knowing we were going to be there."

"Really? That's great! Maybe you can even be friends someday."

I turned to look at her and arched one eyebrow.

"Okay, maybe that would be pushing it a little," she acknowledged. "But at least it sounds like she hates us a little less. She trusted you around her baby – that's huge!"

"I know," I agreed. "She seems a lot happier now. It's like she isn't carrying that chip around on her shoulder anymore. Jake said she always hated being a wolf, more than any of the guys did, and she had worried that she wouldn't be able to have kids. But now that she's imprinted and stopped phasing, I think she has what she's always wanted – a normal life and a family of her own."

"What about Seth? Is he seeing anyone?" Alice asked.

"No, he's still single."

"I wonder why he hasn't imprinted," Alice mused. "He's such a likable guy - he deserves someone special. I wish he could find the one who is meant for him. I wish I could _see_ him. I can't even help watch for him!"

"It does put a damper on playing matchmaker, doesn't it?" I said. "But I think Seth is pretty content as he is. It doesn't even seem to bother him when Paul gives him a hard time about being the only one who hasn't imprinted. And Jacob said something once about how Seth doesn't seem to be worried about looking for his imprint – if he meets her someday, fine; and if not, then he's fine with that too."

"He reminds me of Edward," Alice said, smiling,"the way he doesn't fully realize what he's missing. Except Edward got annoyed when anyone teased him about it."

"Well, Edward had to put up with those rude remarks for a lot more years than Seth has so far, right? Plus he had to hear it in everyone's thoughts. I think that would be enough to annoy anyone after a while."

"True," she conceded. "But my point was that even if Seth thinks he's happy, he could still be happier."

"Probably so," I said. "But maybe his imprint hasn't been born yet. I think he'll meet her someday when the time is right."

"I guess I'll just have to be patient," she said, grinning. "I just get frustrated when I can't peek ahead."

"Speaking of peeking ahead, Renesmee wanted me to ask you how her babysitting job will go next weekend. She has a new client and she's hoping they might start using her on a regular basis."

I waited while Alice searched the future.

"Everything will be fine," she said. "But tell her to make sure the little girl goes to the bathroom _before_ they walk to the playground. It will make the walk home _much_ less unpleasant."

"Okay," I said, laughing. "I'm sure she'll be grateful for the advice."

"How is Nessie?" Alice asked. "I've seen her looking unhappy a lot lately. Is she still just worrying about her friend's mother, or is there something else going on?"

"No, it's mainly just Chloe's mother that has her upset," I said. "It's also made her think more about the fact that Charlie and Billy and Renee are not immortal and that she's going to lose them one day. Edward and I have both talked to her about that, and Charlie did as well, and I think it has helped some. I think she's at peace with it as much as possible – probably as much as I am. I know it will be difficult when something happens to one of them, but we'll deal with it. She's really worried about Chloe right now, though, because her mom is the only close family she has, and Chloe seems to be in denial about how serious the cancer is."

"You don't think she realizes her mother is going to die?" Alice asked, looking perplexed.

I wondered if Alice had seen when it was going to happen, but I didn't want to know. "Well, she knows her mother has cancer, and that it's serious, and that people die from it. But she's still holding out hope that she might get better, or at least that she might live a few more years. Edward says the family was told that she probably doesn't have much time left, but Chloe is just in denial, thinking that her mom could beat the odds. Edward and I were relieved that she made it through Thanksgiving so that they could have that time together. I'm not sure if her mom will make it through winter break – and I don't want you to tell me – but I think it's going to happen sooner than Chloe expects."

"I'm not looking," Alice assured me. "But I think Chloe's lucky to have Nessie as a friend. I'm sure she'll be there for her whenever it happens."

"That's what I've told Nessie. Chloe is very fortunate to have a friend as caring as she is. When I first met the girl, I wondered why Nessie would even want to be around her. I thought she was immature and a bit annoying, but Nessie saw through that. She saw an energetic, seemingly carefree girl who needed a real friend."

"This is the same one who had a thing for Edward, right?"

"Yes, she was in the lab he taught. He said her fantasies were pretty annoying at the beginning of the semester. Do you know that when I first met her, she had the nerve to ask me if Edward was good in bed?"

Alice laughed. "What did you say?"

"Nothing. Nessie stopped her, and she was actually rather pleasant the rest of the time she was there."

"She does sound a little immature. But you can't really blame her for crushing on Edward, can you? Didn't you do the same thing when you were human?" Alice asked, a smile playing on her lips.

"Yes, of course I did. And believe me, I was really glad he couldn't hear my thoughts."

Alice giggled.

"But seriously, I don't hold that against her," I continued. "She apparently didn't realize how obvious she was being. At some point, Nessie explained to her that Edward knew she had a crush on him and that it made him uncomfortable, and Nessie said Chloe was really embarrassed about how she had acted in lab earlier in the semester, asking all those questions to try to get his attention."

"I bet she would have been _really_ mortified if she knew he had heard everything she was thinking!" Alice said, chuckling.

"Edward said she apologized to him at the end of the semester – she said she was sorry for being difficult and that she thought he did a great job teaching the lab. And she thanked him for letting her borrow our car over Thanksgiving so she could visit her mom. She seems to have grown up a lot in the last several weeks."

"Nessie's been a good influence on her," Alice said. "And her mother's condition has probably caused her to focus more on what's really important. We need to turn at this next light."

"Alice, what's your niece's name?" I asked as we entered the city limits of Biloxi, suddenly realizing I didn't know the name of the woman we were about to meet.

"Mildred."

"Mildred? I guess that sounds like the name of an elderly lady. My dad had a great-aunt named Mildred."

"Hey, now," Alice warned. "She's younger than I am."

I turned to look at her, knowing she couldn't be seriously offended, and she giggled.

"It was apparently a very popular name when I was young," she added. "It was in the top ten girls' names in the US for most of the first quarter of the twentieth century."

"Really?" I asked. "That many people named their baby girls Mildred?" It was hard to imagine the name applied to an infant or a child since I had never met a young person with that name. And it was hard to imagine such an old name ever having been trendy. I had never liked trendy names as much, anyway. _My_ daughter's name was unique, meaningful, and beautiful.

"I don't know why it fell out of popularity," Alice said, looking thoughtful. "It's such a pretty name, and it has such a nice meaning too. It means 'gentle strength.'"

"Maybe it will come back in style," I suggested.

"Wait; let me check," she said. Her face relaxed into a blank stare for a few seconds, and then she smiled. "It will be back in the top hundred in thirty-four years, and in the top ten in forty-seven years – if you count spelling variations."

"The nursing home should be about two blocks ahead," I said as my light turned green. I briefly wondered how many spelling variations there could be for the name "Mildred," and then decided I really didn't care.

"Yes, I think I see it up ahead on the right," Alice chirped, growing more excited as we approached the building.

"Have you had any visions about how the visit will go?" I asked.

"I've just seen that she'll be there, and she'll be awake," she answered. "But I haven't been able to see how she'll answer our questions."

I pulled into a parking space, noting that the parking lot was nearly empty. I glanced at the time; it was seven o'clock in the morning.

"Visiting hours don't start until nine," Alice said, answering my unspoken question. "And she's not awake yet, anyway. We can use the time to plan our questions. Can you tell me about the genealogy research you've been doing, so I'll sound like I know what I'm talking about?"

I filled Alice in on various research methods, some I had learned from Fred in Chicago, and some I had picked up on my own. I had been devoting more time to my new hobby in the last couple of weeks and had made some progress researching Edward's human ancestry. I had also found Alice's family in census records for 1900 through 1930, and a likely candidate for her grandfather in the 1880 census. The information was scant, but it would serve as a good starting point for talking to Mildred.

Alice told me a little more about Cynthia from what she had learned from Eli's scan of her memory. We worked out some fictitious relatives that were distant enough that Mildred would not likely recognize them as fake. Alice would claim to be the great-great-great granddaughter of Mildred's grandfather's half-brother. That would mean Alice was descended from Mildred's great-grandfather, which would make it reasonable that she would be interested in learning about Mildred's family and her memories of her grandparents.

Finally, it was nine o'clock, and we walked up the sidewalk to the front door. Well, I walked; Alice danced, looking entirely too graceful in her heels as she bounced with excitement. I stopped her as she reached to open the door.

"Alice," I said. "No one is _this_ excited to visit a nursing home."

"You're right," she said, looking frustrated with herself. "I need to play my role better." She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Okay, I'm ready now."

We entered into a lobby and signed in at the front desk. The lady at the desk looked up the room number for us and explained how to find the room.

I gripped Alice's arm lightly as we proceeded down the hallway, slowing down her pace. The light clicking of her heels against the tile floor had been just a little too rapid.

It was an older building, not very fancy, but it was very clean and seemed pleasant enough. Most of the residents were in their beds, some finishing breakfast, some watching television. Others sat in chairs in their rooms, and a few wandered the halls in wheelchairs or with walkers. There was a nurses' station in the center of the building, which we passed by on our way to the wing where Mildred's room was located.

We heard someone whistle, and turned to see a very elderly man hunched over in a wheelchair about fifteen feet behind us. "You girls sure are pretty," he said, eyeing each of us up and down.

"Thank you," Alice said politely, flashing him a smile before she turned back to continue toward our destination.

"I'm glad you came back," the man called out. "Aren't you going to come give me a kiss?"

"Mr. Jamison!" a nurse scolded. "You leave those young ladies alone." She walked over to us and added quietly, "He's harmless. Just a little dementia. Can I help you find your way around? I don't remember seeing either of you around here before."

"Yes, it's our first time here," Alice answered sweetly. "We're looking for Mildred Cartwright. Can you help us find the room?"

"Oh, Aunt Millie!" the lady exclaimed, her face breaking into a wide smile. "She'll be so excited to have visitors. Are you family?"

"Yes, I'm distantly related," Alice said, "but I haven't met her before. I'm working on my family tree, and my grandpa said she's one of our oldest living relatives so I wanted to come talk to her. Oh, and this is my friend, Bella; she gave me a ride here."

"You come over here where I can see you!" Mr. Jamison called out to us.

"We'll see you again on the way out," Alice promised, winking at him. She was rewarded with a large toothless grin.

"Well, Millie's room is right this way," the nurse said, turning to hurry off down the hall and motioning for us to follow.

She led us about halfway down the hall and stopped at the room number we had been given earlier.

"Aunt Millie! Is that all you're going to eat?" the nurse chided.

Millie was sitting up in her bed with a tray of food. It contained three bowls of pureed foods. One I was certain was oatmeal; this one was half-eaten, and I could identify the scent. The others, one brown and one green, were a mystery, and sat untouched. There was also an empty juice glass on the tray.

"Well, I don't reckon I can eat any more," Millie said slowly, sounding a little tired.

"Well, I'll leave this here a little longer in case you change your mind," the nurse said. "You have company. Enjoy yourself!"

She headed back to her station, and Alice and I stepped into the room.

"Company?" Millie asked. "I don't – " She stopped mid-sentence when she saw us.

"Hi," Alice said softly.

"Melissa, is that you?" Millie asked.

"No, my name's Alice. Alice Brandon."

"Brandon? My mother was a Brandon. Could one of you girls fetch me my glasses? I think they're on that table over there."

I handed her the glasses and she put them on.

"There, that's better," she said. "I thought you were my granddaughter at first. You look a lot like her. You say you're a Brandon?"

"Yes, ma'am," Alice answered.

"Oh, no, no, no. You call me 'Aunt Millie.' Everybody else does."

"Okay, Aunt Millie," Alice said, grinning. "I believe your grandfather was a half-brother to my great-grandfather's grandfather. I've been working on my family tree and I learned I had a cousin here and I just wanted to meet you and maybe ask you some questions about your part of the family, if you don't mind."

"Oh, I don't mind," she said. "I love to talk! You can ask anybody here! So you're my cousin…I never knew Grandpa had a half-brother, but he died before I was born so I never knew his family too well. And who are you?" she asked, shifting her gaze to me.

"I'm just a friend," I said. "My name's Bella Cullen. I came with Alice to keep her company – it was kind of a long drive."

"Well, isn't that nice. You sound like a good friend," she observed.

"She's the best!" Alice agreed.

"Alice. Alice Brandon," Millie repeated to herself. "Did you say _Alice_ Brandon? My mother had a sister by that name."

"I know," Alice said. "I thought that was interesting. I was actually named after my great-aunt, my grandfather's sister. Maybe there was another ancestor further back that we were all named after?"

"I don't rightly know," Millie said. "I guess it could be. I'm sorry, I don't know too much about my family history."

"Could you tell me what you know about your aunt who was named Alice?" Alice asked. "We found her in the census for 1910 but she just disappeared after that. I found the family in 1920, and your mother, Cynthia, was still living at home, but Alice was gone. Do you know where she went?"

"Oh, now that's a sad story," Millie said, a faraway look in her eyes. "She died…I guess it was before 1920. That was before my time, you see. I wasn't born until 1927. But Mama talked about her sometimes. I don't think she ever really got over losing her sister."

"Do you know how she died?" Alice prompted gently.

"Some kind of wild animal got her," Millie said, shaking her head.

Alice and I looked at each other. This was not what we were expecting to hear. Did that mean there was a body? Of course; Nick would have covered his tracks. But the family thought she was at the asylum…

"What kind of an animal?" Alice asked, looking properly horrified.

"Well, I don't rightly know, but I always kind of imagined it might have been an alligator," Millie answered in her slow drawl. "There aren't too many other animals around these parts that would attack a person like that. By the time they found her body – well, let's just say it wasn't in very good shape. Mama said they only knew it was her because Grandma recognized some scraps of fabric from the dress she had been wearing."

"So it was a long time before anyone found her?" I asked, hoping she would continue on with more details.

"Oh, it was a little over a year after she disappeared. Did I tell you about that already? How she disappeared from the asylum?" Millie seemed confused and it looked like she becoming more tired.

"No, you hadn't," Alice answered. "Why was she in an asylum?"

"Well, Mama said she just kind of went crazy one day, yelling crazy things, and they couldn't calm her down. Someone suggested they take her there so the doctors could check her out. They were supposed to go back the next day to see what they thought was wrong with her, but the next morning one of the doctors from the asylum came to Grandma and Grandpa's house – that would be her parents, you see – and he told them she had run away."

"She escaped from the asylum?" Alice asked.

"That's right. I don't guess she lasted too long out there by herself. There's nothing but woods and swampy marshes for miles out where that asylum used to be. I don't know but what she might have starved to death before the animal got her." Millie's speech was slowing, as was her heart rate, and I suspected she was going to fall asleep soon.

"And it took a year before anyone found her?" Alice asked.

"Yes, about a year, I think. Like I said, the body was in bad shape." Millie yawned. "Mama said Grandpa looked for her a long time – searched all through those woods around that place."

"Here, let me move this out of your way," Alice offered, pushing the rolling table with the food tray away from the bed.

"Thank you, Melissa," Millie said, her eyes closing.

We watched as she drifted off to sleep. Despite the aged, wrinkled skin and the wavy silvery hair, I thought I could see some similarities between her features and Alice's. Though she was lying down, I could tell that Millie was quite short, perhaps an inch or two taller than Alice, and though she was quite a bit heavier than Alice, I could imagine that she looked a bit pixie-like when she was younger. I wondered if Alice had the same greenish-brown eyes as a human.

"She'll wake up in forty-five minutes," Alice said quietly. "I'm going to go get her a milkshake."

"A milkshake?" I asked.

"Yes, strawberry." Alice shrugged. "I saw myself bringing her one earlier. She must have thought about asking us for one and then changed her mind."

"Are you sure she's allowed to have that? What if she's on a special diet or something?"

"It'll be okay, Bella. Trust me." Alice said, winking as she slipped out the door.

I sat in Millie's room, listening to people in nearby rooms and the nurses at the station down the hall. I didn't really want to eavesdrop, but in the absence of anything else to focus my attention on, I couldn't help overhearing all of the voices. None of the conversations were particularly interesting.

Finally the door opened, but the heartbeat I had heard approaching had let me know it was not Alice. The same nurse we had met earlier hurried in and retrieved the food tray, which hadn't been touched since we had arrived. "She needs to eat more," the nurse said, shaking her head. "She's a stubborn one, that Aunt Millie." She flashed me a smile. "Where's your friend?"

"I'm right here," Alice answered, walking into the room. "I just went to get us some lunch."

"Oh! You startled me!" the nurse exclaimed. "I didn't hear you come up behind me!"

"Sorry." Alice smiled sweetly at her and handed me a bag from a fast food place and she sat down with her own bag, placing the milkshake on the floor by her chair.

"I'll be back in a few minutes with her meds," the nurse said. "Maybe she'll wake up enough to visit with you some more."

The nurse returned about twenty minutes later, noisily pushing a medicine cart which she left just outside the door to the room. She roused Millie and watched while she swallowed two pills and then reminded her she had visitors.

"Melissa?" Millie asked, still sounding drowsy.

"No, I'm Alice, your distant cousin," Alice reminded her, coming to stand closer so that Millie could see her better.

The door clicked shut as the nurse left, hurrying off to her next room.

"Yes, I remember now," Millie said, rubbing her eyes. "You do look like Melissa. How long was I asleep?"

"Just a few minutes. Long enough for us to grab some lunch," Alice answered.

"I'm sorry I fell asleep! I just can't keep my eyes open sometimes. I'm so glad you're still here."

"We brought you this," Alice said, handing her the milkshake.

"How did you know?" Millie asked, a smile stretching across her lips. "Melissa always gets me one of these."

"You said something about wishing you had a strawberry milkshake just before you fell asleep," Alice lied.

"I did?"

"So it's okay for you to have outside food, right?" Alice asked.

"What they don't know won't hurt them," Millie answered with a twinkle in her eye. She sipped eagerly on the milkshake. "So where were we before I fell asleep?"

"You were telling us about your mother's sister, who escaped from an asylum and got mauled by an animal."

"That's right. She's buried not far from here."

"Really?" Alice asked, pretending she hadn't already been there. "Can you tell us how to find it?"

"The cemetery? Sure. You turn right out of the parking lot here, then go three blocks and make a right. After about seven miles, you'll see a gravel road on the left. When it forks you bear to the right. It's out at the end of that road. It's been a long time since I've been out there, but I remember her grave is near the back, not too far from the big tree if it's still there. She has a stone with her name on it. Mama said Grandpa saved up for four years to get that stone for her. Said he couldn't stand the thought of his baby having an unmarked grave."

"So the stone wasn't placed there when she was buried?" I asked.

"Oh, no. The family couldn't afford it then. It might not look very elaborate by today's standards, but he saved up and got the best he could. Mama never did get over losing her sister, and I can only imagine what Grandma and Grandpa went though when the authorities finally found her."

Alice asked Millie if she could tell us more about her mother, and also questioned her about her own life. Aunt Millie seemed fully awake and alert after her nap and she was more than happy to share her stories with us. She took a short break to eat some of her lunch, which was delivered just minutes after she finished her milkshake, and she continued talking eagerly about her childhood, her marriage, and her children.

Alice especially reveled in the details of Millie's courtship with the man who became her husband. They had met when he returned home from the war. She had seen him from across the room and had whispered to her friend that she was going to marry him – and she did, one year later to the day.

Together, Millie and her husband had raised four children, Don, Caroline, Jim, and Larry, and they had been married for fifty-one years when he died. Caroline and her daughter, Melissa, lived about an hour away, in Mobile, Alabama. Caroline and Melissa visited Millie more frequently than the rest of her family, who all lived much further away. She seemed intensely proud of Melissa, her youngest granddaughter, who worked as a nurse at a hospital in Mobile.

I was glad to know that Aunt Millie had family close by and that she was well cared for, and I was sure that Alice found that information reassuring as well. Millie seemed happy, the nursing staff was attentive, and she had a family member with medical knowledge who checked on her regularly.

Millie gave us Melissa's address, suggesting that Alice write to her about getting copies of some family photographs.

When Millie began to get tired again, we told her we needed to leave. She thanked us for visiting and insisted that we come back sometime. Alice told her that we lived in the Northeast, but that we would be sure to come back and see her again the next time we were in this part of the country.

On our way out, we waved to Mr. Jamison, who was still wandering the halls. His face lit up at receiving such attention, but he didn't seem to recognize us from earlier. He told us that we were "pretty girls" and that we should come back and visit again soon.

We decided to stop at the cemetery before heading back home. We parked at the end of the gravel road and walked toward the tree near the back corner of the cemetery. I noticed several places where the ground was slightly sunken – unmarked graves, no doubt. I pointed them out to Alice and she nodded, saying she hadn't paid attention to them before.

Some graves had small wooden markers, and many were marked by simply by fieldstones. Others had larger headstones, in varying conditions due to the exposure to the elements; the dates were worn off of some but still readable on others. A few had elaborate monuments. Several had small stones like Alice's – just large enough for the name and the birth and death dates. The etchings on Alice's stone were worn but still easily visible. I cleared away the weeds that were growing up against the stone, and Alice placed some flowers there that she had purchased after we left the nursing home.

"I wonder who she was," Alice said, looking down at the freshly decorated grave.

"I don't know," I murmured, unsure of what else to say. We stood there in silence for a moment

"She died because of me, you know," Alice said sadly.

"Alice, you know that isn't true. You did nothing to cause what happened. There was no way you could have prevented any of it."

"I know. But guilt isn't always logical. Nick picked her because she looked like me, or because she was my size. If I hadn't been around, she would have lived a much longer life."

"We don't know that," I insisted. "From what Millie said, the body was badly decayed and not recognizable except for the scraps of fabric. She may have looked nothing like you. Nick may have just took his latest kill and put your dress on her. Things may have turned out better for you, but you were both Nick's victims. _You_ didn't cause her death; Nick did."

"Yeah, I think things turned out quite a bit better for me," she said dryly. "I get life as an immortal, and she gets…my grave. You're right, though, Bella. I know I didn't put her there. It just never occurred to me before that there might really be someone buried in my grave. When I learned the asylum admission date matched the date on the stone, I assumed my parents just got rid of me at the asylum and then declared me to be dead to them. I never thought they might have actually buried someone here."

"It must have been really hard on your parents, seeing that body and thinking it was their little girl," I observed.

"Yeah, and I guess they worried about me for a whole year before that body was found. At least they got some kind of closure."

"Your parents loved you, Alice."

"I know. I'm so glad we talked to Aunt Millie. To think that it took my dad years just to have this stone made for me with my name on it…" Alice sighed. "And they really weren't planning to just leave me at the asylum! They intended to return for me the next day!"

"I wonder who that doctor was who visited your parents," I said. "It couldn't have been Nick; they already knew what he looked like, and even though they knew he was planning to try to get a job there as a doctor, it would have looked awfully suspicious if your pen pal showed up the next day claiming he was already working there and that you had escaped and were gone."

"Maybe it was one of his two friends? Or maybe he had some real doctors from the asylum in on his scheme. Who knows? At least it explains why my parents never came back for me – they thought I wasn't there anymore! They were looking in the woods for me, and I was stuck in that room."

I looked at Alice, thinking of the dangers that could have been lurking in those woods while her father searched.

"In the woods," she repeated. "With at least three mature vampires and a few newborns running around. It's a wonder he wasn't killed too."

"Do you want to try to visit Melissa before we head back home?" I suggested. "We'll be going through Mobile anyway."

"No. That wouldn't be good," Alice replied.

I looked at her questioningly.

"I considered that earlier, but I saw us having to change identities and move again. It would be better if we just write to her like Aunt Millie suggested."

Alice snapped some new pictures of the grave site, and we returned to our car to begin the journey home.

I wondered how Edward and the guys were enjoying their hunting trip. Edward and I usually hunted together; it had been a long time since he had gone with only male companionship. I considered giving him a call but decided not to interrupt his hunt.

Alice and I chatted during the drive back about all the things we had learned from Aunt Millie. Alice had a much broader view of what her family was like because of our visit, and the discrepancy in the dates was no longer a mystery. The date on the cemetery stone matched the date on her admission record because that was the day she went missing, and her family was told she likely died soon after her escape. The obituary wasn't published until a year later because that was when the body was found that was thought to be hers. Most importantly, Alice had further reassurance that her parents and her sister truly loved her. It seemed that Cynthia had told her daughter quite a bit about Alice.

We were just a few minutes from home when my phone rang. I answered immediately, seeing that it was Edward.

"Edward!" I exclaimed, a huge smile spreading across my face. I missed him so much even though we had only been apart less than two days.

"Hello, love," he said. "Is everything going well with your trip?"

"Yes, we got to visit Alice's niece and we learned a little more about her family."

"That's wonderful," he said. "So you've already left? Do you know how soon you'll be home?"

"Probably about fifteen minutes," I answered, glancing at the clock in the car.

"That's good," he said, sounding relieved. "We'll need to go to the airport as soon as you get home. I'll get us tickets for the 8 AM flight. Carlisle got a call from Tanya while we were hunting and she wants us to come see her immediately."

"What? Why?" I asked, confused. What could possibly be so important that we should drop everything and fly off to Denali?

"I don't know," he answered. "But she specifically asked that you and I go with him. She said we'll have to see it to believe it."

* * *

**A/N: What did you think of Aunt Millie? Any thoughts on what Edward and Bella might find in Denali? **


	31. Denali

Chapter 31 - Denali

It felt great to run. After sitting through a fifteen-hour plane ride, which had been sandwiched between a ten-hour drive from Biloxi and a three-hour drive from the Anchorage airport to the campsite where we had ditched our rental car, I was more than ready to stretch my legs.

As we sped toward the home of the Denali clan, I took in the beauty of the icy forests and the meadows that were covered with a thick, velvety blanket of snow. It was night already, our daylight hours having been spent entirely on the plane.

Emmett and Eli had decided to come with us. Eli was interested in meeting our "cousins" who shared our diet, and though I hadn't heard him mention her lately, I knew he was particularly curious about Tanya. Emmett had chosen to join us because he refused to tag along on a two-day shopping trip and simply had nothing better to do.

Suddenly, Edward slowed down, and the rest of us followed suit.

"What is it, son?" Carlisle asked.

Tanya appeared in front of us before Edward had a chance to answer. Powdery snow puffed up into the air at her sudden stop.

"Tanya, it's a pleasure to see you again," Carlisle said. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes, quite all right," Tanya replied, glancing appreciatively at Eli and then back to Carlisle and Edward. "At least I think so. I am hoping Edward can confirm that for us."

"What's going on, Tanya?" Edward demanded. After a short pause, he added, "Chelsea and her mate? Are they still here? Tanya, this could be a trap!"

"The Volturi are here?" Emmett asked in alarm. He appeared ready to fight them then and there.

"Just the two of them," Tanya answered calmly. "And they have no idea you're visiting – it's not a trap. But like I told Carlisle on the phone, you'll need to see them yourself to believe this. I just ask you to hear the entire story before you judge."

"I don't like this," Edward told her, a hard edge to his voice. He exchanged a quick glance with Carlisle, and his tone immediately softened. "Of course, we trust you. We'll meet with them. I just wish we'd had more warning."

"We will hear you out," Carlisle promised. "Can you tell us anything more about what they want?"

"Eleazar will explain more when we get to the house," Tanya said. "Chelsea and Afton have gone hunting, and we don't expect them back for a few more hours."

_What's going on?_ I asked Edward, setting my shield aside.

He shrugged minutely, and I wondered what Tanya was keeping from us.

Tanya shifted her focus to Eli, who she had been sneaking glances at throughout the conversation. "I'm Tanya," she said, flashing him a brilliant smile. "Forgive me for not introducing myself properly. You must be Eli?"

"Yes, that's my name," he said in a clipped tone. I was confused; hadn't he been eager to meet her?

"It's a pleasure to meet you," she continued. "Carlisle was telling me how you came to share our diet. I'm so glad you were able to make the trip with the Cullens. I look forward to getting to know you better."

"I'm sure you do," he replied coldly.

"Have I offended you in some way?" she asked, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion.

Edward chuckled lightly. "His gift is similar to mine," he informed her.

"Oh," she said, slightly taken aback. "I see. I'm sorry; I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"It wasn't that, exactly," Eli told her with a tight smile. "Don't worry about it."

"Well, are we ready to head over to the house?" she asked all of us, still looking confused. "Eleazar and the others are waiting for us."

We soon arrived at our cousins' immense home which was nestled deep in the Denali forest of Alaska. Eleazar, Carmen, Kate, and Garrett were all there. Greetings were exchanged and introductions were made regarding Eli, and then we quickly got down to business.

"I understand Chelsea and her mate have visited you and will soon be returning from their hunt," Carlisle said. "Please fill us in, Eleazar. Why are we here?"

"We thought you should be aware of the most recent developments regarding the Volturi," Eleazar replied, "and we thought you should speak with Chelsea and Afton yourselves, as I'm not sure you would believe us otherwise. And I must admit, as much as the five of us are convinced of their sincerity, we thought it would be wise to ask Edward to confirm their intentions. I'm not sure what repercussions this might have…"

"What repercussions WHAT might have?" Emmett demanded. "What's going on?"

"I suppose I should start at the beginning," Eleazar said. "We received a surprise visit from Chelsea and Afton on Saturday afternoon. You were correct – they are among the guard members who have adopted our diet. We couldn't discern the true reason for their visit at first; they claimed that they had been given permission to travel freely - sort of a vacation, if you will. They claimed they had decided to use the time to visit old friends."

"And she considers you an old friend?" I asked. She certainly had not seemed very friendly the last time I saw her.

"Ah, yes, child," Eleazar replied, a slight smile playing on his lips. "We worked closely together for centuries. Most of the guard members are not at all unpleasant – when you're one of them. I'm sure it must be difficult for you to understand because you've seen only the negative side of the Volturi, but there was such honor and prestige associated with being selected for the guard. We all had a special camaraderie and a high level of respect for one another. Chelsea and I were particularly close. I'm not sure how much of my affinity for her was due to her gift, but I harbored no ill-will toward her until the confrontation we had with the Volturi ten years ago."

"And even then, you excused her behavior as ignorance," Edward said.

"Yes," Eleazar said. "As angry as I was with all of them, I knew they believed in what they were doing – at least most of them, like Chelsea. Did you detect otherwise in her thoughts?"

"I wasn't focused on Chelsea at the time," Edward answered.

"Did you notice any of the guard who were questioning their leaders?" Eleazar persisted.

"No, I didn't," Edward said.

"But they were exposed for what they really are!" I exclaimed. "Chelsea was there; she saw how they were grasping for excuses to kill us. How could she still think what she was doing was acceptable?"

"I suppose it may have been in much the same way that I felt I was behaving honorably when I was helping to acquire the talented members of condemned covens." His regret was plain on his face. "You must understand . . . the bonds between the guard members are very strong. Chelsea herself sees to that. And Aro is very persuasive. I'm sure that after they left, if any of them had begun to doubt, he would have come up with some explanation that painted their actions in a more favorable light. The guard members trust the Volturi implicitly; it would not have been difficult to retain their trust even after what they heard that day."

"So what did Chelsea want when she came to see you?" Emmett asked.

"Well, at first we just talked about old times," Eleazar said. "It was rather awkward from my perspective, considering the circumstances under which we last saw each other, but she seemed at ease, as if she had forgotten that we had been on opposite sides of a nearly deadly confrontation. At one point, Afton remarked on the strength of my gift, and I was rather expecting her to use that opening to try to persuade me to return to the guard, but she didn't. She hasn't used her gift on me at all during this visit; I've felt no pull at all to return with her."

"On the contrary," Eli said. "I think she may have been strengthening the bonds between each of you and herself, in order to gain your trust."

"That's possible," Eleazar admitted, tilting his head as he considered the idea. "But I'm not sure why she would do that. In any case, I don't think it's affected our judgment, but we will see when they return. But let me get back to the point. As I said, we were talking about old times, and finally I decided to just ask what she thought about the pattern I had identified, where every other century or so Aro would come with us to punish a coven, and without exception the one 'repentant' member happened to have a talent Aro desired."

"And what did she say?" Carlisle asked.

"Like me, she didn't want to believe that Aro's main goal could have been acquisition – that we could have been wiping out entire covens just to add to the guard. I explained to her how I had come to that realization when my friends were falsely accused of having an immortal child - I explained my entire thought process to her. I pointed out that in most cases, the one being acquired was someone I had previously identified as having a talent that Aro had been seeking. I had not made the connection at the time, because decades would usually pass before the coven committed some unpardonable offense. But in hindsight, analyzing the pattern, it is the only explanation that makes sense. Chelsea and I discussed and debated for hours, and she struggled to justify their actions, but she eventually came to the realization that she has been an accomplice to great atrocities. And she is horrified. She's not going back to them."

I was stunned. This was the last thing I was expecting to hear. If none of them had turned against their masters after witnessing what had occurred regarding our family, I certainly wouldn't have expected that any of them would disavow their masters ten years later. They all had such lover-like devotion to the three leaders . . . but that devotion was largely due to Chelsea. No one was controlling _her _devotion. She could allow herself to leave.

Carlisle and Emmett looked as surprised as I felt. Edward and Eli appeared less so.

"This is quite unexpected," Carlisle said. "I didn't spend a lot of time with Chelsea when I was with the Volturi, but did know her well enough to believe it's possible that her conscience would bother her if she became convinced of the truth. I am hopeful that she might be truly sincere."

"What about her mate?" Emmett asked. "Did he believe you too?"

"He has been around long enough to have seen a few examples of what Eleazar was describing," Carmen answered. "He seemed surprised at the idea that Aro could have ulterior motives, but he mostly just listened to Chelsea's discussion with Eleazar. Once she was convinced of the truth, it took very little to convince him as well. He seemed equally appalled, and he was in agreement that they could not go back to Volterra."

Edward, who had been listening quietly, finally spoke. "Eleazar, I have great respect for your assessment of what has occurred, but I still fear that it could be a deception. Chelsea can be incredibly persuasive. And the Volturi have become a little too friendly lately. I can assure you that Aro's motives for visiting us were not entirely pure, and I must admit I find it difficult to believe that Chelsea's would be, either."

"You _will_ stay until they return from hunting, won't you?" Tanya asked hopefully.

"Yes, we will stay," Carlisle assured her.

"I wonder why Alice didn't see this," Emmett said. I had been wondering the same thing.

"When she and Bella got back to the house, her thoughts were still very much focused on their visit with her niece and what she had learned there," Edward said. "She's been a little distracted lately with her own history."

"She can't watch everything all the time," Carlisle added.

"If my assessment of Chelsea's sincerity is correct, I wouldn't anticipate her presence here having any effect on your family," Eleazar said. "Perhaps it just wasn't significant enough to get Alice's attention."

"Possibly," Edward said, but he didn't appear convinced. He pulled out his phone and tried calling Alice, but it went straight to voicemail. He ended the call without leaving a message and shoved the phone back into his pocket.

"Where is Alice . . . and Renesmee and the others?" Carmen asked. "I had been hoping they would be able to visit too."

"Alice, Esme, and Rosalie already had plans to go shopping in New York," Edward answered. "Jasper went with them. Alice said they may join us here later in the week if we're still here when they're ready to leave New York. Nessie and Jake stayed home; they don't get the house to themselves very often, and they had already made some plans with a few friends from school who were going to be around during the break."

Tanya, who had been having a separate conversation with Kate and Garrett, walked over to us just then. I thought she was going to say something to Eli, but he stepped aside as if he thought he was in her way, and he moved around to stand between Carlisle and me. This left Tanya standing by Edward. She looked at him, asking a silent question, but Edward just shook his head.

"She will respect your boundaries," I heard Carlisle whisper to Eli.

I wasn't sure if Tanya would have heard him, but apparently she did. She walked over to us and looked Eli in the eye and added, "I promise, I don't bite."

"Unless you want her to," Emmett added with a grin.

"Carlisle is right," Tanya continued, ignoring Emmett's comment as well as Kate and Garrett, who were laughing. "I wasn't trying to touch you. I just wanted to apologize again for whatever offended you earlier." Her brow furrowed in confusion. "But you should already know that since you can hear my thoughts. I don't understand."

"I wasn't scanning you just then, so I had no idea what you were thinking. I assumed you were coming over to talk to Edward," Eli said.

"You can turn it off?" Tanya asked, intrigued.

"It's more like I have to turn it on when I want to use it," Eli explained. "I was scanning Edward earlier, so I was hearing everyone's thoughts when we first met."

"Ah," Tanya said, looking even more fascinated. "Well, I do apologize for whatever upset you before. Edward and Carlisle have both spoken highly of you, and I'm still hoping we can be friends."

"You really don't know," Eli observed, looking slightly amused.

"No, I don't," she answered, perplexed. "Would you care to refresh my memory?"

"You want me to help you remember?" he asked pointedly.

"Yes. Please."

"Okay."

"What was that?" Tanya exclaimed, her eyes darting around. "Did _you_ do that?"

"You still didn't get it. Let me replay it again," he said.

"That is amazing!" she declared. "But I still don't understand. Surely you've met other women who were attracted to you. You must encounter these sorts of thoughts all the time."

"You're focusing too much on the conscious thoughts," offered Edward. "It was the nuances, the attitude, which he found objectionable."

"Ah. I think I see now," she said after a moment, her eyes widening slightly as she realized her offense. "Well, I'm truly sorry I thought of you that way, Eli. Obviously, I was mistaken."

"Yes, you were," he agreed, his face relaxing somewhat. "Your apology is accepted. I would like to apologize to you as well. I suppose I was being quite rude."

"Think nothing of it," she said, flashing him her signature smile. "Friends?"

He accepted her extended hand and they shook.

"I'm glad that's all cleared up," Garrett said. He walked over to Eli and looked at him speculatively. "So you can read minds and you can also show people their own memories? You have _two _talents?"

"Not exactly. I can scan a person's mind, which includes reading either thoughts or memories. Scanning memories has a side effect of causing the subject to relive the moment," Eli explained. "It's more vivid for our kind; humans just think they've remembered something on their own."

"Show me," Garrett said.

"Sure," Eli said, looking a little surprised. I knew it wasn't often that anyone volunteered to be his target. "Is there anything in particular you'd like me to pull up?"

"Show me the day I met Kate."

"December 18, 2006?"

"That's right, but I didn't see anything."

"I haven't pulled it up yet. I'm just analyzing your memory index. That day looks like a bizarre mixture of pleasure and pain. You want just the pleasurable portions, I assume?"

Garrett's lips stretched into a broad smile. "Show me the mixture. I want to see what you can do."

"You don't know what you're asking for," Edward warned. "You will experience the same physical sensations as before."

"I want to see for myself," Garrett insisted. He turned back to Eli. "Do your worst."

Eli raised his eyebrows at Garrett's attitude and granted his request. Garrett instantly fell to the floor just as he had ten years before when he had challenged Kate to show him what she could do. He stood up again quickly, and judging from his facial expressions I assumed Eli had switched over to the more pleasant memories.

"Amazing," Garrett said finally, looking genuinely impressed.

"I apologize," Eli said. "I probably should have picked a less intense moment, but you did ask me to do my worst."

"That I did," Garrett agreed. He looked over at Kate fondly and added, "She can do worse than that now, you know. We've been practicing."

And Edward thought _he_ was masochistic.

"I can project it a couple of inches away from my body now," Kate added. "It's really helped to have a willing target to practice with."

"Lately we've been working on seeing if she can extend the field around me as well," Garrett said. "But we haven't been having much luck with that."

"Would it help if you - " Edward began but stopped mid-sentence. "They're almost here."

We all knew who he was referring to. Eleazar went to the door to greet Chelsea and Afton, and I extended my shield around Edward and all of our friends and family. Chelsea was most certainly not going to be successful in influencing any of us.

"I see you have additional company," Chelsea said, her red eyes flashing as she noticed the five of us. Her voice was only slightly accusatory. "Checking up on us, are you, old friend?"

"I just wanted them to see for themselves that you're not our enemy," Eleazar said smoothly. "You surely don't object?"

"Of course not," she replied. She turned to Carlisle. "It's just as well that you're here. I owe you my deepest and most sincere apologies. I should have known you were incapable of the aggression Aro wants us to believe you have been plotting. The pattern Eleazar brought to our attention was so obvious. I feel ridiculous that I didn't recognize it on my own."

"Come, now, it was not that obvious," Carlisle said. "It took Eleazar centuries to figure it out."

"I was willingly strengthening my own bonds to the Volturi," she said, shaking her head in disgust. "I served them for centuries without ever questioning their motives. When Eleazar first shared his conclusions with me, I thought it impossible, but he seemed so sincere that I decided to remove my own artificial bonds to them so that I could consider the possibility from an unbiased perspective. And I never knew that Eleazar had already identified the talented ones before we were sent to deliver punishment. The amount of talent we collected during the missions where Aro accompanied us can't be coincidence."

"She's being sincere," Edward observed, speaking lowly enough that only those of us closest to him would hear. "She is appalled at what she's been a part of."

"I'm especially grieved by what we did to Afton's coven," Chelsea continued, looking over at her mate with regret in her eyes.

"Your intentions were pure, my love. It cannot be undone. Let us not speak of it again," Afton said. His voice was soft, but his tone left no doubt that this topic was now closed.

"As you wish," she replied.

"Well, I'd ask you how your hunting trip went," Garrett said, politely changing the subject, "but it looks like you weren't able to find any polar bears."

"I'm afraid not," Chelsea agreed. "We came across something much more tempting."

"It had been over a year since either of us had indulged in real blood," Afton added. "We came across two hikers on our way to the hunting grounds you had described. We were unable to resist."

"We're not going to be able to keep up your diet," Chelsea said. "I do not wish to offend you or your friends, Eleazar, but it is unnatural. We only abstained as long as we did to please Aro, and I will no longer allow him to have any hold over us."

"Eleazar said you're not going back?" Emmett asked.

"That's right; we're going to strike off on our own," Chelsea confirmed.

"What do you think they will do when they realize you've defected?" Carlisle asked. I could see the concern etched on his face. Aro would not be pleased if he thought we had turned two of his guard members against him.

"It will probably be a few weeks before Aro notices," she replied. "He expected me to take my time on this mission, and he's so absorbed in playing museum director that I don't think my absence will draw his attention for a while. There's a new exhibit he's been working on that's been consuming most of his time. After that, well, he won't be happy, but I don't see that there's anything he can do about it."

"What about Demetri?" I asked. "Won't he track you down?"

"I can handle Demetri," she said with a confident smile.

I must have looked confused, because Edward added, "She can strengthen his loyalties to her while weakening his ties to his masters. He might track her down, but he won't take her back with him."

"What if they send the entire guard?" Emmett asked.

"I can't imagine them doing that," Chelsea said. "Guard members have left in the past without being pursued." She looked pointedly at Eleazar.

"But I asked permission, and it wasn't easy to leave. In fact, I suspect you tried to persuade me to stay," Eleazar replied.

"Guilty as charged," she admitted. "But they did allow you to leave when I was unsuccessful. I will send word in a few weeks that Afton and I left Denali on good terms with your coven and that our mission was accomplished. I'll tell them that we have decided to spend some time as a couple but that we plan to return at some unspecified point in the future.

"You really think they'll let you leave?" Edward asked. "You play a very important role. I'm not sure what might happen to Marcus without you to bind him to the others."

"Oh, he'll survive," Chelsea said, laughing. "He doesn't really have much choice, after all. Seriously, Edward, I don't think he has enough motivation to even attempt suicide. Besides, Aro has had him under his thumb for millennia, since long before I joined the guard."

"What about Caius?" Carlisle asked. "Even if Aro is distracted with his museum duties, won't Caius soon realize you are gone? Eleazar has said he suspected that you strengthened the bonds of the guard, that you kept them loyal. Don't you think Caius will notice your absence?"

"I don't think Caius is aware of the extent to which I exercise my talent within the guard," she answered. "Aro uses Marcus to know when someone's loyalty is wavering, and he signals me to strengthen those bonds. Caius can't see what Marcus sees, so he won't notice the difference. Marcus would probably speak up if he noticed anything alarming, but the guard is generally very loyal. I just strengthen their bonds occasionally as a precaution to help them work more smoothly together. Most of them have been together for centuries and they have come to trust and respect one another in their own right. "

"Could we count on you if they decide to come pick a fight with us again?" Emmett asked.

Chelsea hesitated, looking torn.

"We need to go off on our own," Afton said in his calm, flowing voice. "We won't be taking sides in any conflict."

"We couldn't fight against our friends," Chelsea agreed. "I hope you can understand. Our friends in the guard are not malicious; most of them are just misled, as Eleazar, Afton, and I were."

"Have you considered that you might be able to persuade them to see the truth?" Carlisle asked.

"That would be treason," Chelsea said immediately, shaking her head. "I . . . I couldn't. I'm sorry."

"We must look out for ourselves now," Afton said emphatically. "We have served others for too long. I will say it again: We will not take sides." He did not raise his voice, but it was clear that his position on the matter would not budge.

"We do understand," Carlisle said smoothly. "We should not have asked so much of you."

"Can you tell the Cullens what you told us earlier about your mission here?" Eleazar asked.

"We were just told to come and be friendly," Chelsea answered. "Aro told me to take a 'vacation' and visit my old friend, Eleazar. As I'm sure you already know, he considers you – the Cullens – to be a threat to the Volturi. He believes that in any conflict you would stand by them as you did before. From what he's told me, he just wants to smooth the relations between the Volturi and your two covens. When I came here, I genuinely thought he was just trying to avoid conflict, but given the pattern that Eleazar has shown me, I have become convinced that he has ulterior motives. I believe he still has an eye on your talented members, but as history shows, he can be very patient. It could be decades or centuries, but if I were you, I would be watching my back."

"So you aren't aware of anything specific he might be planning?" Edward asked.

"No," Chelsea said, shaking her head. "He's been acting really odd lately. His decision to abstain from human blood and go play human in a museum is just bizarre. But we all know how eccentric he can be. Perhaps he hoped to gain your trust by imitating your diet? I don't know." She shrugged her shoulders. "He certainly hasn't confided in us about any plans, though. For now, he seems more than content to occupy his time with human histories and artifacts."

"I don't know of any specific plans, either," Afton added. "But I can tell you that he did seem quite fascinated by your mind-reader, your shield, and your psychic. And speaking of talented members, does Aro know about this one here?" He gestured to Eli. "I don't recall seeing him before."

"No, I've been careful to stay out of his way," Eli answered for himself. "And I'm not a member of their coven; I'm just a friend."

"I'm not sure what you can do," Afton said, "but I can tell you have an offensive talent that is strong and multifaceted. Aro would certainly be interested in meeting you. Chelsea and I don't plan to return to Volterra, but if we should ever encounter Aro again at some point in the future, he will learn of you."

"I understand," Eli said.

"He may be a nomad, but my family would stand by him if the need arose," Carlisle said pointedly. "He has already proven that he would do the same for us."

"It is good that he has that protection," Afton acknowledged. "Now, if you will excuse us, we would like to get on our way."

Goodbyes were exchanged, and the two of them left as quickly as they had arrived. I relaxed my shield, wondering how Afton had been able to "see" anything about Eli's talent.

"So what did you think?" Tanya asked Edward.

"You were right," Edward admitted. "They both seemed very sincere. I couldn't sense that they were holding anything back. Of course, their openness was partially due to the fact that they knew I could hear their thoughts. But they didn't seem to be hiding anything."

"And what about you?" Tanya asked Eli.

"I heard what Edward heard," he said, shrugging. "They weren't thinking anything of significance that they didn't share with us verbally. The information they gave us seems reliable. They're mostly concerned about protecting themselves right now. They're a little conflicted about leaving the guard, but they know they can't go back, believing what they now believe. One touch from Aro and they would both probably receive a death sentence for their thoughts."

"Carlisle, that could never work," Edward murmured.

We all looked at them questioningly.

"I was just wondering what the chances were that Eleazar could convince any more of the guard like he did Chelsea. It was just a passing thought. Aro would never be foolish enough to send any more guard members here on the pretense of becoming our friends after two of them failed to return from their assignment. And if they thought we were turning their own guard against them, we would be inviting conflict."

"Exactly," Edward agreed.

"I'm not sure any of the others could be convinced anyway," Eleazar said. "There is no such thing as reasoning with Jane or Alec. Renata is never out of Aro's hearing range. Felix enjoys his position with the guard too much; I can't imagine him ever leaving. He likes order and routine and he enjoys his role in enforcing it. Demetri . . . I think he distrusts me since I left the guard, and we were never close. I don't think he would take the time to truly consider the evidence. Heidi joined after I left, so she doesn't know me. Corin is assigned to the wives and doesn't really concern herself with anything else. There were several others with them when we had the confrontation, but I don't even know their names. The rest, I believe, were probably just fighters - not part of the elite. They are offered positions with promises of prestige, but in reality they're considered the most expendable of the guard. Ungifted fighters rarely last more than a century or two. Felix is the exception; he is permitted to accompany the elite guard due to his unusual strength. But I don't think I would have any influence with any of the fighters."

"Does Corin have a gift?" Tanya asked.

"She can influence a person's mood, but it's more limited than Jasper's ability. People who spend time with her feel content and happy, but it takes a while to work."

"I think I know the one you're referring to," Edward said. "Her thoughts mainly centered on her concern for the wives. I had the impression that she was primarily responsible for protecting them."

"What exactly is Afton's gift?" I asked. "He said he could tell Eli's gift was powerful. Is his ability similar to Eleazar's?"

"It is similar to mine in that we can both see some aspects of others' gifts," Eleazar explained. "He primarily senses how strong a gift is, and he can tell whether it's offense or defensive, but he otherwise gets no indication as to what the gift is. I can usually detect exactly what someone can do, and I can get a feel for various details about how it works and what its limitations are, and I can make deductions as to how powerful or useful it might be. But I don't really get a reading specifically on how powerful it is like Afton does."

"He sees sort of an aura around those who are gifted," Eli explained. "The brighter the aura, the stronger the gift."

"He could see your aura even when I had you shielded?" I asked.

"No, he saw us as they were approaching the house. You didn't shield us until they came inside," Eli answered. "It seems he can detect them from a great distance, even when there's a barrier to normal vision, such as a wall."

"So Afton was your replacement?" I asked Eleazar. "He could identify potential talent, and Aro could gain the rest of the information he wanted with a simple touch."

"I informed Aro of his talent over two hundred years before I left the guard," Eleazar said with a sigh, a faraway look in his eyes. "Anyone want to guess how long it took after I left before his sister was accused of revealing her nature to a human? Only eighteen years - how convenient!" He snorted in disgust.

"So Chelsea was just realizing that she helped kill her mate's sister so that Aro could add him to his collection," I observed.

"His biological sister and her mate," Eleazar said. "I'm sure the charges against her were contrived, and Chelsea sees that now, too."

"She was worried that he would come to resent her for her part in his sister's senseless death," Edward said. "But he has played an equal role in the destruction of other covens; he shares her guilt, and he knows she thought she was doing the right thing at the time."

We continued discussing Chelsea and Afton's visit and eventually drifted to other topics. At some point, Emmett mentioned how well Eli could fight, and of course Garrett wanted to see for himself. He issued a challenge to Eli and the guys all headed outside so as not to damage the house.

Kate had said she didn't care to join them, so Tanya, Carmen, and I had stayed inside as well in order to keep her company.

"I sometimes think Garrett is too fearless for his own good," Kate said when the men were out of earshot. "He already knows your friend can incapacitate him with just a memory. I just couldn't bear to watch."

"He almost seems like he _enjoys_ getting shocked," I pointed out. It seemed that she shocked him herself on a regular basis; hadn't he just said that she can do worse now?

"Oh, it's not that he enjoys pain," she explained. "He likes testing himself, pushing himself. And he finds pleasure in knowing he's helping me develop my talent. It's different when _I'm_ shocking him, because we're working together and I know when to stop. Garrett has other memories that are much worse than the ones I've given him – those are the ones I'm more worried about."

"I don't think Eli would use his memories against him," I said, trying to reassure her. "They're just play-fighting."

"He could defeat Edward so easily without making use of his talent?" Tanya asked incredulously.

"Well, Emmett may have exaggerated a bit," I said. "Edward and Eli are pretty evenly matched when they're both focusing only on each other's thoughts, and that's what they normally do during a fight. He did use memories against Edward once, but Edward had given him permission and they were both taking full advantage of the unique aspects of their own gifts. Even then, Eli kept apologizing for the intensity of the memory he had pulled. I'm certain he wouldn't pull any painful memories on Garrett unless Garrett specifically asks him to like he did earlier."

"I still have a feeling Garrett is going to be on the losing end of these fights," Kate said.

"You're probably right," I said with a chuckle. "Eli is a pretty good fighter, even without using memories as a distraction. He probably_ will_ listen to his thoughts, so it would be like fighting Edward. But he won't truly hurt Garrett. He'll be fine."

"Oh, I'm sure he'll survive, but I still worry about him," Kate said with a smile. "He may want to experience everything, but that doesn't mean I have to watch him get pummeled."

"I know what you mean," I said. "There were times when they were practice-fighting that I really wanted to step in and help Edward, but I knew that was the last thing he would want."

"It's really hard to just watch sometimes," Carmen agreed. "But most men would rather have a limb torn off than have their ego bruised."

Kate and I both giggled, though I knew that Edward's objections to my helping him were at least as much about me getting hurt as they were about his ego.

"Limbs can be reattached," Tanya said solemnly. "Egos are not so easily repaired."

"Is something bothering you?" Kate asked, turning to Tanya in concern. Her eyes softened. "You really like him, don't you?"

"Who?" Tanya asked.

"You know who!" Kate exclaimed, jabbing her sister with an elbow.

"What's not to like?" Tanya said, sighing. "It seems I fall the hardest for the ones who are the most unattainable. And I ruined any chances I might have had with him before I even said a word to him."

"Come, now, it can't be that bad, dear," Carmen said. "He may fall for your charms yet."

"I don't want him to just fall for my charms," Tanya protested. "I want him to actually _like_ me. But apparently my mind is such a hideous place that anyone who can see inside of it finds me repulsive."

"I'm quite certain Edward never found you repulsive," I said, feeling very odd to be comforting Tanya on this subject, as Tanya and I had never discussed her prior "interest" in my husband. "Just because he only saw you as a friend doesn't mean he thought your mind was 'repulsive.' I've never heard him say anything unkind about you."

"Edward is too much of a gentleman," she replied. "I annoyed him. It was never intentional, but I know I did. It doesn't matter; I wasn't what he was looking for. He was waiting for you, and I was genuinely happy for him when he finally found you. But Eli has dismissed me before I even had a chance. "

I had been very surprised by Eli's initial reaction upon meeting Tanya, considering how eager he had been to meet her when he first learned Edward knew her. He had seen memories of her in the minds of human males, and he had heard Edward's thoughts about her, and none of that had deterred his interest. In fact, he had referred to the humans' memories as "very pleasant" and had seemed pleased to learn that she didn't limit herself to humans. Perhaps her mind really was repulsive; it was only upon meeting her in person that his opinion had seemed to change. I wasn't sure what else to say that would be encouraging.

"He said he forgave you," Carmen pointed out. "And I'm certain I saw him sneaking a glance at you a couple of times while Chelsea was here, and again just before the men headed outside."

"He's still been avoiding me," Tanya said, dismissing what Carmen was implying. "He's been careful to stay on the opposite side of the room from me ever since he got here."

"What exactly offended him so much?" Kate asked. "What were you thinking when you met him?"

"I was thinking the same thing I always think when I first meet an attractive male," she replied, glaring at her sister. "You used to have such thoughts yourself, you know."

"And that offended him?" Kate asked. "Most men would be flattered."'

"Most men can't hear all of my thoughts," Tanya retorted. "He didn't like my attitude. I'm not accustomed to rejection and I was overconfident. I believe he thinks I thought he would be an easy conquest. "

"Was he wrong?" Kate asked.

"I was mainly thinking about how delicious he looked and how I'd love to get my hands on him," Tanya said. "That's why he had to jog my memory a few times before I figured out what had upset him so much. I guess I was assuming I wouldn't have any difficulty, and he picked up on that. When Edward had called earlier to let me know a new friend would be coming along, he even mentioned that his friend was looking forward to meeting me. I hadn't expected any resistance. It wasn't meant as an insult to his character."

"He did accept your apology," I reminded her. "I don't think he's the type to carry a grudge. He's pretty easy-going."

"Maybe, but he still has a bad first impression of me, and he's been avoiding me."

"Give him a chance to get to know you," Carmen suggested. "First impressions can be changed."

"Let him get to know me?" Tanya asked, lifting one eyebrow. "I think that's the problem. He can hear every annoying thought that passes through my mind."

"He doesn't listen all the time," I reminded her.

"Could he be listening _now_?" she asked, her eyes widening as she considered the possibility.

"I don't think so. If we can't hear them, I don't think he could scan from that distance," I said.

"Garrett's favorite clearing is about three miles out," Kate told us.

"His range definitely isn't that good," I said. "He could listen through Edward, if Edward was making an effort to pay attention to our conversation, but I'm sure they're both focused on their fighting."

Tanya nodded, looking somewhat relieved. "Has Eli ever brought up memories for you?" she asked me. "That was _really_ amazing."

"No, my mind's a rather private place," I answered. "I've never invited him in. What was it like?"

"It was a lot like when your daughter shows us one of her memories," she explained. "But it's even more vivid, and it's your own memory instead of hers. It's not just visual; it brings up the same thoughts and emotions as before, and yet at the same time it's like you're watching it. It's hard to explain."

"Yeah, that's kind of how Edward described it." I said. "He didn't find the experience nearly as enjoyable as you seemed to, though."

Tanya smiled and turned to look out the window in the direction of where the guys had gone. I followed her gaze and saw that the snow had begun falling more rapidly. Moonlight was illuminating a snow-covered tree in front of their house. During the pause in our conversation, my mind went back to the last time Edward and I had played in the snow outside our cottage on the Cullens' property in Forks. We'd had so much fun that day. Edward . . . in the snow . . .

"I just had a wonderful idea," Kate said excitedly with a twinkle in her eye, pulling me from my daydream.

"What's that?" Tanya asked.

"We should have a snowball fight! We can go sneak up on the guys!" She was grinning from ear to ear.

"We'd be outnumbered, four to six," Carmen protested.

"And you can't sneak up on Edward," Tanya added. "No matter how quietly we approach, he'll still hear what we're planning."

"But we've got Bella!" Kate insisted excitedly. She paused, waiting for the others to catch on.

"But he would still hear – " Tanya began. "Oh. You're thinking she could shield all _four_ of us?"

"Exactly!" Kate exclaimed.

"Can you do that?" Carmen asked me. "We'd all be moving around and it's not a true hostile situation. You can control your shield that well now?"

"Sure, as long as we stay reasonably close together," I said. "I'm pretty good at snowball fights. I usually shield everyone except Edward; that way, he can't hear any silent communication from his own team, either."

"You are awesome!" Kate said, her smile growing even larger.

"I also have the advantage of being able to sense their locations with my shield," I said.

They all gaped at me for a moment.

"I didn't realize you could do that," Kate said.

"Can you distinguish us from the guys, even when you can't see us?" Carmen asked.

"Sure. I feel everyone as a point of heat or light, and each person's is unique. I've shielded all of you before, so l can recognize everyone individually. The guys will probably still win, though, since we're outnumbered. We'll have the advantage at first, but they'll find us eventually and take us down one at a time."

"Oh, I don't care who wins!" Kate said jovially. "It'll be fun to surprise them."

"Well, let's go!" Tanya urged, laughing and pulling Kate up from her chair.

"You coming?" I asked Carmen.

"Of course!" she answered with a grin. "I was just thinking we should stockpile some snowballs in several locations before we throw the first one. You can shield just the four of us while we do that so Edward won't suspect anything."

"You are now being shielded," I said as I extended my shield around my three friends.

"And we should go barefoot," Tanya suggested. "Shoes can make too much noise."

We all removed our shoes as she had suggested and then headed out into the snowy night, silently weaving our way through the trees. The snow felt soft and pleasant against my feet and the white forest glistened in the moonlight.

When we got close enough that we could begin to hear the men's voices, we backed up and began stockpiling our snowballs. They were a few miles further out than we had expected. We built forts, made tunnels through the snow, and scouted out trees that were good to hide in or behind. When we were satisfied with our ammunition and defenses, we silently crept into visual range. Eli and Eleazar were sparring with each other. Edward, Emmett, Carlisle, and Garrett were watching them, intent on following the fight.

Tanya, using hand motions, indicated that she wanted to throw the first one. I nodded, and Kate and Carmen moved off to the side. She waited until Eli had pinned Eleazar to the ground and had begun to stand back up after having leaned over him in victory with his teeth at his neck. She took aim carefully and easily hit her target. The tightly-packed snowball connected loudly with Eli's rear end and instantly disintegrated. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. Eli's reaction was hysterical – he whirled around, growling at his unknown attacker, and of course he saw no one. His surprise gave way to confusion, and he looked to Edward for an answer.

Edward, Emmett, and Carlisle, having had snowball fights with me in the past, immediately realized what was going on.

"Bella!" Edward roared.

"Game on!" Emmett shouted.

I extended my shield around all but Edward and Eli. They would be able to communicate with each other, but that was better than either of them being inside the shield where they would be able to hear the thoughts of everyone else.

Carlisle quickly explained to Garrett and Eleazar what was happening.

They began throwing snowballs in retaliation, but not before we had hit each of them several times. We were constantly moving, and they were throwing blindly in the direction of our previous positions.

They stopped for a moment to confer with one another and huddled together, developing a strategy. We spread out, temporarily surrounding them, and continued pelting them relentlessly.

When they broke apart, the girls regrouped in the area where we had made our preparations. The guys each took off in a different direction, leaving Edward and Eli near the center of their formation, as I knew they would. This made it more difficult for me to keep the other guys shielded while leaving Edward and Eli unshielded, but all of my recent practice was paying off. With just a little effort, I was able to flex the shield into an irregular shape that curved around them even as they were moving. I slowly and carefully extended my shield toward Edward until I could feel the brightness of his life force pressing against the shield from the outside, and then I used that as a guide for defining the shield's boundary. I did the same with Eli, and then went back to one of our stockpiles and picked up another armload of ammunition.

Tanya and Carmen were behind one of our forts. They each threw a series snowballs, hitting Eli, Eleazar, and Carlisle. They had already darted to the next fort before the projectiles reached their targets. We were fortunate that the weather was cooperating with us; the light wind whistling through the trees was just enough to mask the sound of the snowballs hurtling through the air so as long as we hit them from behind they didn't see or hear it coming.

We managed to avoid being hit for a full three minutes as we took advantage of our pre-formed snowballs and our prearranged hiding places.

I heard a loud crack which was immediately followed by a shriek of surprise from Carmen. Carmen had been hit in the shoulder, while another snowball had connected with a branch high above her. Momentarily stunned at being hit for the first time during the game, she was still standing there half a second later, and the small avalanche from the broken branch left her covered in snow. She took off into one of our snow tunnels and I saw Carlisle and Eleazar chasing after her.

They soon began close in on us. They knew that we probably wouldn't spread out too much because it would be difficult for us to communicate with one another, and our scents had become concentrated in the area we had staked out.

Peeking out from behind one of our few remaining forts, I saw Edward just a short distance in front of me. I was relieved to see that he had his back to me and I was careful to remain perfectly still. He was shaping a snowball, his eyes on Tanya whose strawberry blond curls could be seen peeking out from behind a large tree branch at least thirty feet up.

While I was considering whether it would be better to get another shot in at Edward and reveal my location or to hide and wait for a better opportunity, I heard Emmett and Garrett ganging up on Kate.

I timed my throw perfectly, destroying Edward's snowball just as it left his hand. He turned and looked at me, and the look of annoyance on his face immediately changing to a grin. He thought he had me cornered. As I turned to escape, I saw Tanya leap down and disappear behind some trees.

I ran for one of the snow tunnels we had created which I remembered was nearby. I darted around a huge boulder and then made a giant leap – the kind of leap I used to make over the river behind our house in Forks – and I landed just inside the tunnel, leaving the snow between the tunnel and the boulder undisturbed. He would not be able to pick up my scent between the two. I pushed some snow up to the tunnel entrance, effectively closing it off.

"Bella!" I heard Edward call. I could feel him at the edge of my shield, not more than ten feet from where the tunnel entrance had been. I wanted to laugh at how narrowly he had missed me but I held it in and quietly slipped further into the tunnel. I needed to close off the other end before he found it.

I could hear Garrett and Kate laughing; he had tackled her and was teasingly complaining about the shock she had given him in response.

I made it to the other end of the tunnel undetected and used snow from the floor and walls to seal up the exit. I sat in the dark, not moving or breathing, and wondered how long it would take Edward to find me. I had never used this tactic before.

In between Garrett's and Kate's shrieks of laughter, I could hear Carmen's soft, tinkling laugh. Eleazar was murmuring something to her. I couldn't make out what he was saying, and I was fairly certain I wouldn't have wanted to. Carlisle was no longer with them, and their points of light in the fabric of my shield had nearly merged.

"Me? You think _I _started this?" I heard Tanya ask, her voice rising above the others' laughter. I could sense Emmett and Eli there with her. They probably had her cornered if she was talking to them.

"Who else would aim the first shot at his butt?" Emmett demanded.

"Why would I do that?" Tanya protested innocently.

Emmett snorted.

I heard the sound of several more snowballs hitting their target.

"You have to tackle her," Emmett informed him. "That's the rule."

"Yeah, that's what Edward just told me," Eli replied.

"What? You can hear each other?" Emmett asked.

"She had to leave both of us unshielded or we could have heard the girls' thoughts."

"Oh, right," Emmett said. "So why are you still throwing snowballs at her? Those don't count; Kate and Carmen have already been defeated. That's fifty percent of their team."

"I think he's waiting for _you_ to do the honors," Tanya said. "Just go ahead and – " Her voice suddenly stopped with the thunk of a snowball and I began to hear the sounds of coughing and spitting in its place.

Emmett roared with laughter, and Eli was laughing so hysterically that he seemed to be having trouble catching his breath.

"That was unnecessary," Tanya said indignantly, still spitting.

"She's all yours, man," Emmett said, still laughing. He headed off to join Edward and Carlisle who were still searching the area near the boulder where I had made my leap into the tunnel. The three of them then split off in different directions, and I could feel Edward coming almost directly toward me.

Tanya shrieked, and I was no longer able to maintain my shield between her and Eli as they became entangled with one another. I expanded the shield to include Eli, rather than unshielding Tanya, whose thoughts at that moment I was fairly certain Edward would prefer to be spared.

Edward was approaching in the direction of my tunnel very rapidly and soon I could feel his light pressing against my shield from almost directly overhead.

There was a sudden gust of snow and I was knocked to the ground. Edward had inadvertently stepped on the roof of the tunnel and it had collapsed, unable to support his weight. He landed on top of me and the tunnel caved in around us. My shield snapped back into place as a result of the distraction.

Edward's face was pressing into my left leg and we were both buried in the snow. I pushed my shield away from my mind.

"_I'm not sure that qualifies as a tackle,_" I thought to him.

He pushed through the snow and brought his mouth up to my ear. "Oh, really? I knocked you down, didn't I?"

"_You fell on me!"_ I argued.

He raised himself up and pushed some snow aside, creating an opening above us to allow in air as well as some light from the moon.

His face was hovering above mine now. "Semantics," he murmured, his mouth brushing against my lips as he spoke. "I don't think you're getting up any time soon."

Effortlessly pushing his legs through the tightly-packed snow that partially entombed us, he straddled me and held my arms down by the wrists.

This was how these fights always ended, with the couples pairing off. Had the team sizes been more evenly matched, it was just as likely that I would have been the one who ended up tackling Edward, and he wouldn't have fought me. But to be perfectly honest, I didn't mind my current predicament one bit. I hadn't had any time alone with Edward since the night before my trip to Biloxi.

I felt a little bad for Carlisle and Emmett whose wives hadn't come. They had already headed off in the direction of the house.

I wondered how Tanya had faired with Eli – would he have enjoyed the physical contact that had been somewhat forced by the rules of the game, or was he still too offended by the thoughts she'd had about him earlier? Would he have teased her and gotten her hopes up like he had done to Chloe? He was naturally a bit of a flirt, but surely he knew better than to flirt with Tanya if he wanted her to keep her distance from him. From what I had felt through my shield before Edward landed on me, they had seemed to really be going at it. Perhaps she was trying to seduce him? Or were they fighting?

"They're both fine; they've gone back to the house already," Edward said as his lips trailed down my neck.

"Does he really dislike her?" I asked, my shield snapping back into place as I realized I had left it aside longer than I had intended. "Somehow I had been expecting that they might hit it off. He had seemed so eager to meet her before we came."

"He finds her both intriguing and infuriating," he answered. "But I'm not thinking about _them_ right now."

"Sorry," I said, feeling bad that my worries about Tanya's feelings were distracting me from the moment. I gazed into Edward's amber eyes, their intensity communicating the depth of his devotion. I pushed my shield away once more so that he could see and hear that he had my undivided attention. I raised my head to kiss him and reveled in the feel of his mouth moving with mine. He released my wrists, lightly trailing his fingers up my arms and down my body, and I promptly forgot about everyone else for the next several hours.

* * *

"It's about time," Emmett complained as Edward and I joined the others in the house. "How many hits did you guys have?"

"I was hit fifteen times," I answered. "What does it matter? You know you won."

"That depends," he said, looking at Edward. "What about you, bro?"

"Ninety-six, not counting the time she hit a snowball I'd just thrown."

"No!" Emmett complained dejectedly, slumping into his chair. His eyes darted over to Kate, who just chuckled and shook her head.

"What? We won? How?" I asked. "You had four hundred bonus points." The guys would have gotten a hundred points for each of us they took down at the end of the game. We had instituted that rule several years back because if we just kept hitting each other with snowballs, the game could last forever. We had also made the rule that once at least half of one team was out of play, snowball hits were no longer counted and the remaining players would engage in friendly fights, with hundred-point bonuses being granted to the winners. These rules gave both sides more of a fair chance, but since we were outnumbered to begin with, I had known that the guys would end up with all of the bonus points.

"Three hundred," Eli corrected, his lips twisting into an amused grin. "Tanya defeated me."

"Oh," I said, wondering how that could have happened. I glanced over at Tanya, who was engaged in a game of chess with Carlisle. Not only had I been certain that Eli was the better fighter, but I had suspected that Tanya would have _enjoyed_ losing to him. Unless . . .

"Did you _let_ her win?" I asked, turning back to Eli.

"Absolutely not," he said, looking slightly offended. "You had her shielded from me, remember? She was able to catch me off guard."

"You physically penetrated my shield," I told him. "I wasn't able to keep it between you. You could've scanned her after you started fighting."

"I figured that out a little too late," he said, laughing. "And it probably would've helped if I hadn't upset her by throwing that snowball into her mouth."

"I thought you could handle one woman by yourself," Emmett said, half-teasing and half-complaining. "I guess I should have stayed and helped you."

"I haven't survived for more than a millennium without learning how to fight," Tanya said, without looking up from her game. "And that snowball was disgusting. He deserved it."

Eli raised his eyebrows but didn't comment.

"Checkmate," Carlisle said.

"Eleazar, would you like to play him next?" Tanya asked. She went over to join Carmen while Eleazar took her place at the chess board with Carlisle.

"Tanya," Eli said, walking over to her. "I'd like to speak with you privately. Would you care to join me for a walk?"

Tanya looked up at him, looking surprised and slightly annoyed. For a brief moment, she seemed to debate whether she wanted to accept or not. "Sure," she finally answered.

I wondered what he could want to say to her that he wouldn't feel comfortable saying in front of the rest of us. He wasn't the shy type, and he knew there were no secrets with Edward around. Maybe he just didn't want to embarrass her in front of the rest of us with whatever he felt he needed to say to her? Were her thoughts really that bad?

"Eli," Edward said, a warning tone in his voice.

Eli looked over at him and they seemed to have a silent conversation. Edward rolled his eyes and sighed as Eli turned back to Tanya and escorted her out the door, carefully refraining from any physical contact.

"_What's up with Eli?"_ I asked silently.

Edward just shook his head slightly. He wasn't going to tell me anything right now. He looked a little worried and I wondered what was bothering him. I hoped Eli wouldn't be too hard on Tanya. She had seemed so dejected earlier.

* * *

Several hours later, we were listening to Edward play the piano when Tanya and Eli came back into the house. Edward stopped playing when they entered the room, and we all turned and stared at them. They had strolled in with smiles on their faces, looking considerably more at ease with one another than before they had left.

"So how was the walk?" Kate asked eagerly.

"Very pleasant," Tanya and Eli both answered together. They immediately looked at one another and giggled, seeming to find great amusement in their joint answer.

As their laughter ended, the two of them continued to look at each other with goofy smiles on their faces while the rest of us gawked at them. I had never seen Eli so jovial before. Had he become smitten by Tanya after all? And ironically, despite her reputation, I had never seen Tanya with a man – her escapades had always occurred away from the house, and she didn't have "relationships." Was this how she normally looked when she was ensnaring her prey? It seemed very odd seeing the two of them look at each other that way.

"Just tell them," Edward said, rolling his eyes. "Kate's about to burst with curiosity."

"We had a long talk," Eli began, putting his arm around Tanya and pulling her close as he tore his eyes from her to look at the rest of us. "I couldn't fight it anymore. I've felt drawn to this woman since the moment we met. I came here thinking I might have some fun on this trip, but I had no idea I'd meet my mate."

As Eli had finished speaking, he had turned back to Tanya, who was still watching him in adoration, and after lightly caressing the side of her face, he tilted her chin back and proceeded to kiss her sweetly and ever-so-gently on the lips.

"What?" Kate exclaimed at the word "mate," her eyes growing large.

Tanya smiled up at Eli as he ended the kiss, and then turned to Kate and nodded, her smile stretching from ear to ear and her strawberry blonde curls bouncing up and down.

Kate ran forward and embraced her sister. "Really? You've found your _mate_?" she shrieked, happy but disbelieving.

"Yes!" Tanya said, still smiling and nodding. "It only took me a little over a thousand years to find the right one!"

I was quite surprised, myself. Somehow I had assumed that Tanya would always continue her succubus lifestyle, never content with just one man. But if Kate had found Garrett after all those years, certainly Tanya could change too.

We all congratulated them, and when things had settled back down, Garrett voiced what I had been wondering.

"I didn't think you two even _liked_ each other," he said. "What was going on with you earlier?"

Eli and Tanya looked at each other and smiled.

"I was just being stubborn," Eli said. "Her first thought when she met me wasn't altogether unappealing, but she had me sized up as a sure thing; she never considered whether I would even be interested. I might not be as warm as a human, but I'd do nicely for today. I guess I saw it as sort of a challenge to resist her."

"I wasn't really thinking all of that," Tanya protested. "At least, I wasn't aware of thinking of all of that."

"Right; I think I was reading too much into the attitude of her subconscious thoughts," Eli said. "She hadn't really had a chance to meet me yet. We hadn't even been properly introduced. I shouldn't have judged her by those thoughts. It just hurt my ego a bit when I realized I was being placed on the same level as the humans she'd been with."

"It didn't take me long to realize he was very different from anyone I've ever met – human _or_ vampire," Tanya said.

"I wasn't sure why I even cared so much," Eli continued. "I had known what to expect, but once I met her in person I couldn't help wanting her to see me in a special light. I was surprised to realize that the slight envy I had felt toward all of those other men had changed to jealousy; I went from wanting what they'd had to worrying that I'd lose her to them. And I couldn't resist the urge to keep listening to her thoughts. I told myself I should try to give her some privacy and stop eavesdropping, but there was a pull I just can't quite explain."

"You had a funny way of showing it at first," she teased, nudging him in the side.

"So I kept listening, and I soon realized that she no longer thought of me in the same way as she had when she first saw me. I could tell that my rejection had hurt her much more deeply than I would have expected, and I began to realize that she genuinely liked me and admired me for more than my looks."

"Like I told the girls earlier," Tanya said, "What's not to like?" She looked at him hungrily and caressed the side of his face as she began to enumerate his appealing qualities: "He's a vegetarian vampire with an amazing talent. He's a skilled fighter. He's brave and loyal and willing to stand up and protect his friends when the need arises. And he can hear my desires without the need for me to voice them."

"Okay, okay, we get the idea," Emmett said, laughing. "So why'd you get so mad when Mr. Perfect fed you that snowball?"

"That was annoying, but it wasn't really what upset me," she explained. "I may not be able to read minds, but I knew that both of you thought it was a given that he could defeat me in a fight. You had me outnumbered and then you strolled off as if you weren't needed. I saw that cocky look on his face and decided to teach him a thing or two."

"You were right; I was overconfident, and I deserved it," Eli said.

"I didn't know he was planning to kiss me once he got me pinned down," Tanya said, chuckling. "I would have let him win."

"Then when we came back into the house, she was worried that she had bruised my ego again by embarrassing me in front of my friends," Eli said. "She didn't realize that I don't embarrass that easily. She thought she had completely ruined her chances with me, and I couldn't stand to let her keep thinking that any longer. That's when I decided we really needed to talk."

"I thought he was upset with me," Tanya said. She turned to him and added, "You sounded so serious and formal when you asked me to go for that walk."

"You should've seen the look on her face when I told her how I really felt," Eli said, smiling at her.

"I don't think I've ever been so surprised in my entire life," Tanya said. "And I've lived a very, very long time. That's one of the things he said he finds fascinating about me, you know – I have the largest memory index he's ever seen."

"That was just a very polite way of telling you that you're really old," Kate teased.

"I'm twenty-two and he's twenty-six," she said firmly, and then winked. "Not that much of an age difference."

"She let me pull some of her memories today," Eli said. "It's amazing – the things she's seen!"

"I enjoyed reliving them . . . and sharing them with you," Tanya told him.

"We are very happy for both of you," Carmen said. "I've never seen you so ecstatic, Tanya."

"I've never felt this way before," Tanya declared. "I've been with thousands of men, but it's never been like this. This is it; this is the real thing. I'm finally in love."

* * *

Three days later, I was on a plane to Seattle with Edward, Renesmee, and Jacob. We had promised Charlie a longer visit during winter break, so we would be spending the next seven days visiting with him and Sue, as well as Billy and our other friends in La Push.

Our visit to Denali had been much more eventful than I had anticipated. I never would have guessed that Chelsea would be there or that she would become persuaded of the truth about the Volturi's motives and decide not to return to them. I wondered what repercussions, if any, her decision to leave them might have.

I also had not expected Tanya and Eli to become a mated couple. I had known he was interested in meeting her, and I'd had little doubt that she would find him appealing – after all, he was male – but I hadn't anticipated anything more than a fling. But as Carlisle had once told Edward, strong emotions can alter us in permanent ways.

I was very happy for both of them. Edward had told me that he had been worried when he first realized that Eli was falling for her, because he didn't think her capable of returning the feelings. He had still been concerned when Eli asked Tanya to go for that walk, and he had tried to warn him that Tanya didn't have committed relationships, but Eli had ignored him.

When they had returned together, Edward could see that Tanya truly saw Eli as very different from all the others. She truly admired, respected, and cared for him, and it went much beyond just a physical attraction. Eli had seen inside her mind, had seen the "real her," and he still wanted her. He found her ancient mind intriguing, and he wanted to make her happy.

Edward said he had never realized the depth of Tanya's loneliness. He thought _he_ had waited a long time for _me_, but Tanya had waited over a thousand years for Eli. She just hadn't waited as patiently or as contentedly as Edward had.

Shortly after the happy couple had announced their new relationship, Alice had called to say she was on her way with the wedding gown. She _had_ seen the visit with Chelsea and Afton but had successfully hid it from Edward. She knew that if she told had him, the plans for visiting Denali would have been altered and Eli might not have gone and met Tanya. Edward was a bit angry with her at first for hiding it from us, but of course no one can stay angry at Alice for long. All had turned out well, and he had quickly forgiven her as she had known he would.

Tanya and Eli had balked at Alice's wedding plans at first, saying that they didn't need a human ceremony since neither of them was human. Alice insisted that she had seen it, and Tanya had confessed that she did like the idea of exchanging vows, as she had seen Edward and me do at our wedding. She liked the idea of having something special to commemorate the beginning of their relationship, to mark it as different from all of her previous ones. But she had no desire for all of the trappings, and there was no need for it to be "legal," as they would just have marriage records forged if they ever found a need for them.

Alice had kept it simple, relatively speaking. She had brought clothes for the bride and groom and fresh flowers for decoration. The only guests were our two families. Jasper, Rosalie, Esme, Renesmee, and Jacob had flown in with Alice, so we were all there. Carlisle had officiated, with Tanya and Eli reciting vows they had written themselves. Afterward, we enjoyed a foodless reception, which had consisted of dancing, dancing, and more dancing – something I didn't mind so much now that I was as graceful as Edward.

The two were now on their honeymoon and were planning to join us at the Cullens' house in Cambridge for Christmas, which was only a week and a half away. Eli planned to return to Dartmouth next semester, as Tanya wanted him to go ahead and finish out the degree he had been working on. They would find a place to live alone for the first few years, and would then rejoin the family in Denali.

The plane began to descend, and I looked out the small, scratched window next to my seat and watched as the streets and houses grew larger. Charlie would be waiting for us at the airport; he had insisted on picking us up, saying there was no need for us to rent a car. It would be nearly torturous riding that slowly all the way to Forks, but as Renesmee had reminded me, it was more time that we could spend with Charlie.

The plane bounced a couple of times as it touched down on the runway and we eventually came to a stop. We waited until most of the humans had exited, and then we grabbed our small carry-ons and began making our way off of the plane.

I decided that this was turning out to be a really nice winter break. The visit with Alice's niece had gone well, and we had enjoyed several days with our cousins in Denali. I had gotten to know Tanya better, and the slight awkwardness I'd always felt between us was completely gone now. I was very happy for both her and Eli, and it was nice that Eli had become one of our "cousins" – he and Edward had grown close, and it was good to know that he would continue to be around. I was looking forward to the upcoming week with my dad and then Christmas with the Cullens. And then we'd still have another week to relax before starting classes again in January.

* * *

**A/N: What did you think of Chelsea and Afton's visit? And what did you think about Tanya and Eli? I'd love to hear from you. :)**


	32. Christmas

Chapter 32 – Christmas

Renesmee played the final strains of her song for Jacob, and applause immediately filled the room. We all sat around Carlisle and Esme's living room amidst mounds of wrapping paper from our family gift exchange. There were a few gifts, such as the song Renesmee had written for Jacob, which hadn't required wrapping. I was so proud of my daughter; she was every bit as talented at the piano as her father was.

"I loved it," Jacob assured her as he tried to inconspicuously wipe a single tear that had escaped from his eye. He joined her on the piano bench and whispered something in her ear.

She smiled up at him and he leaned down for a brief kiss.

"I want to show you your gift now," he said, taking her hand and leading her toward the door.

"It's outside?" she asked in surprise.

"Yeah, it was kind of too large to wrap," he said with a chuckle. Then in response to the look she gave him, he added defensively, "And it's not a car; I promise. I think you'll like it."

The rest of us had already seen the gift Jacob had made for her – a complete set of beautifully hand-carved bedroom furniture. It was out in the building Esme used for repairing and refinishing antique furniture; she had upgraded it to a fully-equipped wood shop when Edward told her what Jacob wanted to make for Renesmee. Esme had casually mentioned to Jacob during one of her visits to our house that she had a new wood shop and that he was welcome to use it any time. He never seemed to suspect that it had been set up just for him. He had worked on the furniture during the times Renesmee had gone out with Chloe, and then Edward had taken her out for some father-daughter time yesterday to give him time to finish up.

"Bella, this is so special," Esme said, turning through the book I'd made for Edward. I had taken all of the research I had done on his human family and created a photo book. It had all of the pictures we had found at his Chicago house, as well as some pictures of other ancestors I had found in my online research. There were a few ancestors for whom I was able to include full-page stories on their lives, including some interesting tales concerning his great-grandfather during the Civil War.

"You uncovered all of this on your own?" Carlisle asked, clearly impressed. "I've never seen some of these photographs before."

"I found one of Edward's distant relatives through a genealogy message board," I explained. "There's an elderly lady in California who has been researching her Masen ancestors for decades. I got a lot of pictures and other information from her. And Fred, the guy we met in Chicago, was really helpful too. I did do _some_ research on my own, but a lot of it came from Sarah and Fred, and I just organized it and added in the pictures we found in Chicago."

"May I see it?" Eli asked when Esme had closed the book.

She passed it over to him and he and Tanya turned through it together.

"This was you?" Tanya asked, looking over to Edward with a small smile playing on her lips. They had come to the first pictures of him as a human boy.

"Yes," he answered. "We found those in a closet when I took Bella to see my childhood home recently."

"You're very fortunate to have these," she replied. "I have nothing from my previous life. I don't remember my human parents at all. I remember some general things about my life, but I can't picture my parents in my mind, even with Eli's help. It's been too many centuries, and I guess I didn't try hard enough to keep the memories. Esme's right; this is _very_ special." She passed the book along to Jasper, who had not looked at it yet.

"Bella, how was your visit with Charlie last week?" Carlisle asked.

"It went well," I said. "We mostly stayed inside the house, since we didn't want to risk being seen around town, but it was unusually warm and we were able to go fishing twice. I never liked going with him when I was younger, so Charlie loved that."

"Yeah, and you should've seen his face when Bella and Edward jumped out into the lake to scare some fish in his direction," Jacob said, laughing. "Once I convinced him that they couldn't drown and didn't need to come up for air, he thought it was pretty cool. He said he caught more fish that morning than he normally does in a whole month!"

"They have all of their kitchen remodeling done, but the rest of the rooms were still in desperate need of being painted, so we took care of that for them while we were there," I said.

"I could tell Sue really appreciated that," Renesmee added, as she and Jake rejoined us from their trip out to the woodshop. "She said she had been planning to take a few days off from work to do it, but she hadn't even found time to go pick out paint. We didn't tell her we were going to do it – we just surprised her one day. She came home and the whole inside of the house had been painted. She kept marveling over how each room had been painted the exact shade she had envisioned. I guess she hadn't realized that Dad could see her thoughts in full color." She chuckled as she remembered Sue's reaction.

"Did you get to drive your old Volvo any?" Rosalie asked. "I'd love to see you riding with Charlie. You hardly even let _me_ drive that car back when it was new."

"He wouldn't let me behind the wheel," Edward said with a lopsided grin.

"He drove us from the airport in Seattle to his house in Forks and stayed five miles per hour _under_ the speed limit the whole way!" Renesmee told her.

"It took over four and a half hours to get there," Jake grumbled.

"Edward and Jake both offered to drive, but he politely declined," I added. "They were hinting pretty heavily about the slow speed, though, so that probably killed their chances."

"You know that's why he picked us up at the airport, don't you?" Edward asked me. "He knew full well that the rental car cost was irrelevant. He was just making sure we wouldn't speed on the way there."

We all laughed. With as much as he understood about us now, he still didn't want to trust that his daughter was virtually indestructible. Or perhaps it was his way of making sure we obeyed the law, whether we were human or not. It was probably a combination of both.

Then Edward turned to me and said, "Bella, now that Nessie and Jake are here again, I have one more surprise for you."

"What?" I asked, confused. "But you already got me the necklace –"

"Yes, I know, we agreed on one gift each," he said. "But this isn't exactly a Christmas present. And it's not like I can send it back, anyway."

"Okay . . . " I said slowly, still perplexed. I had thought the gift-giving was over. Now the entire family was staring at us, waiting for the surprise. Or perhaps they were in on it and were eager for my reaction.

"I hope you're not upset with me for keeping this from you," Edward continued, "but I only learned of this yesterday and I thought it would make a nice Christmas surprise."

"What is it?" I asked, my curiosity finally piqued. He thought I might be upset that he had not given me my extra present _early_?

"I received an email from Thiago yesterday. His brother had surgery three weeks ago. The tumor was benign but it was quite large and was compressing brain tissue. Dr. Ramos was able to remove it surgically."

"So he's going to be okay?" I asked hopefully.

"It looks that way," he answered. "He'll need to be checked regularly to make sure it doesn't come back, but his prognosis is good. With this type of tumor, chances are favorable that it won't return."

The gift of good news was one extra present that I didn't mind receiving. I had been wondering when we would receive news about his condition. "I'm so glad," I said, relieved. "So the surgery was three weeks ago? I wonder why he waited so long to let us know."

"He only has email access at work," Edward explained. "And he took some time off from work to be with his family and help out during and after the surgery."

"Who is Thiago?" Tanya asked.

"His mother noticed when Mom was first pregnant with me, and she said something that let them know there were other hybrids in South America," Renesmee explained. "Without her information, Aunt Alice wouldn't have known where to look to find Nahuel, and the Volturi probably would have destroyed us all."

"I just wanted to do something for her to show our appreciation," I added. "We met her son, Thiago, when we returned to Isle Esme for our anniversary, and we learned his brother was ill. Edward arranged for him to receive proper medical care, but we weren't sure if doctors would be able to save him."

"Would you like to speak with Kaure?" Edward asked me. "Thiago said she had mentioned wanting to talk to you again, and I thought you might enjoy hearing the good news from her, so I took the liberty of arranging a phone call with her."

"That would be great," I assured him, smiling as I thought about how happy Kaure must have been when she received the good news.

"Thiago sent me the number for her friend's house since Kaure doesn't have a phone," he explained. "She's supposed to be spending the afternoon there, waiting for our phone call." He entered the number as he handed me the phone.

Kaure was nearly hysterical with gratitude, thanking us over and over for saving her "baby."

"How is his recovery going?" I asked.

"Oh, he's still recovering from the surgery, but the headaches have already stopped," she answered. "He's supposed to be taking it easy, but he's been up and about at home."

"Did the doctor say how long the recovery should take?" I asked.

"They said he could resume normal activities after six weeks, so that will be the beginning of the new year," she said. "And that reminds me, we got more wonderful news yesterday! Henrique was awarded a scholarship!"

"That's great!" I said, surprised by this news. I looked at Edward but he just smiled at me.

"He is so excited that he'll be able to attend college," Kaure continued. "He starts next month. We don't know how he got it, though. Did you submit the application?"

"No, I didn't. Maybe someone at the hospital submitted his name," I suggested. "How did you find out about it?" I raised my eyebrows at Edward and he winked at me.

"We received a letter in the mail," she answered. "It said was from a group here in Brazil, but I thought maybe you had something to do with it. It said it was awarded to minorities who have overcome adversity."

"It wasn't us," I told her, a little worried that she might not accept it if she knew the truth. She had accepted medical care for her son, but would she accept money to pay for an education?

She proceeded to thank me some more for getting Henrique the help he needed, and then asked if she could speak with "Dr. Cullen" to thank him personally as well. Several of those in the room looked confused for a moment when I handed the phone to Edward, rather than to Carlisle. Kaure thanked him as profusely as she had thanked me, and after answering some questions she had about certain medical terms she'd heard Dr. Ramos use, they ended the call.

"Why did it take so long for him to have surgery?" I asked Edward. "We had his appointment arranged for mid-August."

"I asked Thiago about that yesterday. He said there were delays between each step – the initial appointment, the CT scan, the biopsy, the pathology lab results – from two different labs since the first one had inconclusive results, then the surgery to remove it. Yesterday was the first I had heard from him; he was apparently waiting until he had 'real news' to tell us."

"There were a few times I thought of trying to call Dr. Ramos, but I was so afraid of getting bad news," I admitted. "I should have checked on him. We might have been able to speed things up."

"You did speed things up," Edward assured me. "Without you, they likely would have waited much longer to seek help, and he might not have gotten medical attention at all. I had been meaning to check on them myself. Dr. Ramos had instructions to contact Carlisle if he ran into any problems, and I knew it would take some time for him to get through the system, but I had been starting to get a little worried."

"Well, it sounds like the young man is going to be just fine," Carlisle said. "Your intervention probably saved his life, and I'm very proud of both of you."

* * *

Later on in the afternoon, Jacob had turned on the television and started flipping channels. I wasn't paying much attention until he stopped on a particular show. The cheesy special effects seemed vaguely familiar. I decided I must have seen it when I was human. Then a zombie walked across the screen.

"Is this that movie -"I began, only to be interrupted by Edward.

"Yes. We'll change the channel," he said, giving Jacob a look that left no doubt that he expected him to comply immediately.

"But I never got to see how it ended," Jacob complained. "It's just a movie. Right, Bella?"

"I don't mind," I said. I moved my shield aside so that he could see that I meant it. "_Really. I don't think I'm going to be any more impressed the second time around, but you're here now, and that makes all the difference. I just want to sit here snuggled up with you; I don't care what's on TV._"

Edward took my hand in his, and I could feel the tension leave his body as he began to accept that the movie really didn't bother me.

Eli suddenly erupted into laughter, and we all turned to see what was so funny. He was laughing so hard that he was having difficulty catching his breath. Everyone looked confused, except for Edward, of course. I could tell he was trying to keep a straight face, but his efforts were in vain. He was soon laughing along with Eli, and it wasn't long before the rest of us joined in even though we had no idea what we were laughing at.

"What was so funny?" Tanya asked, still smiling at the unknown joke..

"Emmett…" Eli began, only to be interrupted by his own laughter.

Emmett looked up, startled back into a serious expression. "Huh? I was just… Oh! No, no, you can't –" He broke off mid-sentence but continued looking intently at Eli, seeming to be in silent communication.

"Will you tell me later?" Tanya whispered in Eli's ear.

"Just spill it," Rosalie said. "It's probably nothing we haven't heard before."

"So you were listening to all of us through Edward?" Jacob asked Eli, sounding a bit resentful.

I had momentarily forgotten that sharing my thoughts with Edward was not always private when Eli was around. I was briefly gripped with worry that he had been listening to my thoughts, but then I realized that I had not shared anything mentally that I would be embarrassed about. Eli already knew the story about my trip to the movie theater with Jacob and Mike.

"No," Eli answered. "Emmett just had an odd expression on his face, and I scanned him without thinking. Don't worry, Emmett, I won't tell everybody."

"Come on, Em," prodded Rosalie. "If it was that funny, you have to share it with us!"

"It wasn't funny," Emmett protested.

"Ya know, I think we should turn the tables for a change," said Jacob. "I think Edward and Eli should scan each other and tell us all what _they're_ thinking!"

"That's a great idea!" Emmett agreed enthusiastically, looking relieved at the prospect of shifting the attention away from himself.

"That is an interesting thought," Rosalie agreed, seeming a little distracted.

"I double-dog-dare you," Jacob added with a cheesy grin.

Rosalie rolled her eyes at Jacob but then held her gaze on Edward in a way convinced me she was sending him an additional unspoken message.

Edward's jaw clenched, and I remembered what he had told me about how he felt when Aro took his thoughts. I decided he was looking too uncomfortable.

"You all know he doesn't eavesdrop on you on purpose," I said icily. "If you want to know what he's thinking, just ask him!" I was surprised at the forcefulness I heard in my own voice.

"Yeah, because that works so well," Jacob said, and Rosalie rolled her eyes again, this time in agreement.

"He knows we're right," Rosalie said, directing her words at me. "Edward's been hearing everything that goes through my mind since the moment I awoke to this life. I think it's time he was on the receiving end!"

"It's okay, Bella," Edward tried to assure me. The look on his face told me that he had things under control and that he found my unnecessary outburst amusing, and I felt my anger dissipating as quickly as it had been aroused.

"What, no one wants Edward to tell you what _I'm_ thinking?" Eli asked, attempting to lighten the conversation.

"I always want to know what you're thinking, darling," Tanya assured him, trailing a finger along his arm. "But I'd prefer to wait until we're alone and let you tell me yourself."

I felt Edward's familiar twinge against my shield and quickly expanded it to encompass Eli and Tanya just before Eli leaned over to kiss her.

"Carlisle is wondering if you could scan my human memories," Edward told Eli. "Why don't we give that a try?"

"Edward, I didn't mean to ask you to do that," Carlisle insisted. "It was just a thought. You've always gone out of your way to try to respect our privacy, and you don't owe us anything."

"It's okay," Edward said. "Really. You're right; it will be interesting to see what he can find, since I've never been able to remember much on my own."

Eli somewhat reluctantly disentangled himself from Tanya and turned so that he was facing Edward.

I retracted my shield from Eli and expanded it to cover the rest of the family instead. I knew Edward would want two-way communication with Eli even though he should be able to see the memories being brought up in his own mind, since – as far as we knew – he didn't have a separated memory index like Alice.

"I'm not sure how much I'll be able to recover," Eli warned everyone. "His human index is severely faded and blurred, more so than it is for the rest of us. I'll try to pull one of the more pleasant memories first."

"The day I got my dog," Edward said, his face relaxing into a genuine smile.

"Watch?" I asked. "The same one that was in the picture?"

"Yes, but this is when he was just a puppy," Eli answered. "Edward played with him all day and then cried when his mother wouldn't let it sleep in his room. She said dogs belonged outdoors."

"Smart woman," Rosalie said with a grin, ducking as Jacob threw a decorative pillow at her.

"I was _five_," Edward said through his teeth, punctuating the sentence with a roll of his eyes. He seemed to be directing the words to Emmett, who was making sad sniffling noises and pretending to wipe away tears.

"There are a lot of pleasant memories throughout his childhood that are associated with the dog," Eli continued. "Most of them are too faded for me to make out, but I can see from the index that they were pleasant."

"Was he still living when you were changed?" I asked Edward, suddenly feeling worried about the fate of his beloved pet. "Do you know what happened to him?" Had anyone gone to the house to care for the animal after Edward and his mother were hospitalized? Would Carlisle have been able to check on the house when he had a newborn to keep under control?

"He died when I was about twelve, love," Edward answered. "He was given an appropriate burial. I remembered it when we found the picture of him. It looks like I was actually eleven and a half - it's bizarre seeing my own memories indexed like this."

"It's odd for me too," Eli said. "I've never had anyone who could guide me around his own index before. I would have avoided that one since it was one of the most painful ones of your childhood, but you took me right to it when Bella asked what happened."

I felt bad about having laughed at his dog's name when we were looking at pictures in Chicago. The animal had obviously meant a lot to him.

"Can you look for his most embarrassing memory next?" Emmett asked, smiling widely in anticipation.

"I think he just pulled it for me," Eli said.

"Yes?" Rosalie prompted. I felt like she was enjoying this a little too much.

"Edward, you don't have to do this," Esme reminded him.

"Right after I turned seventeen, I had some documents forged so I could enlist in the armed forces," Edward said.

"Dad, we forge documents all the time," Renesmee said.

"There's more," Eli answered.

"You got caught?" Jacob guessed.

"Not by the authorities. His mother caught him both times," Eli told us.

"You got caught _twice_?" Emmett said, laughing. "By your _mother_?"

A few of the others chuckled as well.

"That wasn't the embarrassing part," Eli informed us.

Edward finished the story with a hint of a smile. "After the second time, she marched me down to the enlistment office, introduced me to the sergeant, and told him in no uncertain terms that I was underage and was not to enlist for another year. She gave quite the performance. Now, having to stand there and listen to her lay down the law to an army sergeant would have been embarrassing enough on its own account, but it was even worse because the place was crowded, and some of my friends had seen her taking me in there."

Nearly everyone laughed. I didn't want to join in because I wasn't sure how Edward really felt about it. He was being a good sport, but his pleasant expression wasn't necessarily an indication that he was enjoying himself. But I just couldn't stop the smile that spread across my face as I pictured my husband as a human teenager being marched in and out of an enlistment office by his mother.

"I can see how that would be embarrassing," Jasper said with a snort.

Even Carlisle was smiling. "Elizabeth Masen could be a formidable woman - when she wanted to be," he said. "I only knew her briefly, but she had a strong will and could be very persuasive, especially when it came to protecting her son." His expression grew more serious as he continued to speak; he was looking in Edward's direction but seemed lost in his memories. "I can definitely see her saving you from going off to war. And if you had both survived the Spanish Influenza, and if the war had still been in progress when you reached the age of eighteen, I have little doubt that she would have found a way to continue thwarting any attempts you made to enlist."

"I don't know; I was pretty determined, too," Edward said.

"What? You, stubborn?" Alice teased.

Edward laughed in response, an easy, genuine laugh. The others joined him, and my phone rang just then.

"Hi, Mom," I said, trying not to laugh.

"Hi, Bella! Are you having a nice Christmas? It sounds like you all are having a great time!"

"Yes, I was just sitting here with the family. We opened gifts and had lunch and now we're just sitting around talking."

"Barbara cooked for us. Phil had told me she was insisting on making everything herself this year, so I didn't bring anything, and then his sisters brought as much as they usually do. I'm not sure if she was trying to make me look bad for not helping out or if she really hates my cooking that much." She laughed. "Oh well, I hate cooking anyway! Are you at Carlisle and Esme's or did you cook for everyone this year?"

"We're at Carlisle and Esme's. She wanted to do all the cooking, but she agreed for the rest of us to bring desserts. You should have seen her turkey, and there were homemade rolls…" I heard Jacob's stomach growl at my mention of food, and as he headed to the kitchen to find something edible I felt guilty for forgetting that we did have someone here who needed to eat. "So what are you up to, Mom? Are you home now?"

"No, we're still here at Phil's parents' house. The men are all watching TV, the nieces and nephews are playing outside, and his mom and sisters are in the kitchen gossiping about other family members." She lowered her voice and added, "His mom is _really_ getting on my nerves." There was a brief pause before she exclaimed, "Oh, Bella, I miss you!" I heard a slight sniffle and the faint sound of what I was fairly certain was a tear rolling down her face.

"I miss you too," I assured her. Edward, who already had his arm around me, pulled me a little closer.

"Could you and Edward come visit tomorrow?" she pleaded. "I know it's short notice, but you still have over a week before your classes start back, right?"

"Well, yes, but weren't you and Phil planning to visit his brother tomorrow – the one in Texas?"

"We were, but Joel and Micah both have a stomach bug so they asked us to reschedule. We definitely don't want to go down there and get sick! So can you come? Please? I don't want to be stuck here with Phil's mother the rest of the week!"

I looked at Edward and he shrugged; he was leaving the decision entirely up to me. I looked at Alice and she gave me a thumbs-up. It would be rainy.

"I think we might be able to go," I answered.

"Really?" Renée squealed. "Oh, this is great! What time do you think you can be here?"

"Maybe by tomorrow night," I said. "I'll have to check what flights are available."

"Okay! Well, listen, I'd better get back to the kitchen. I can't hide here in the bathroom all night. It would look funny." She giggled. "Give me a call when you get tickets, all right?"

"Okay."

As we said our goodbyes, I noticed Alice hop up and zip out of the room. Before I could wonder what she was doing, she was back, handing me another beautifully wrapped gift.

"Is this what I think it is?" I asked.

"Trust me, you'll like it," she answered. "Just open it."

I did, and just as I had expected, there were two tickets to Jacksonville. They were for an early flight on December 26; we would be there by mid-afternoon.

"Thanks, Alice," I said sincerely. I had been wondering if we would be able to get a good flight time for the day after a holiday. "So you knew about this? Did you know too, Edward?"

"No, not until Renée called," he answered. "She hadn't let it slip."

"It was pretty iffy," Alice said. "I had seen that there was a chance, so I got the tickets just in case. I hadn't really given it any more thought; it didn't become firm until the phone rang."

* * *

Several hours later, Edward and I were packed and headed off to the airport. It would be great to see Renée again. I had been so distracted during our last visit; it would be nice to spend some time with her just relaxing.

"I hope Carlisle and Esme didn't mind us leaving so soon," I said as we pulled out onto the road. "We're spending a whole week with each of my parents, and only two days with them. I feel like we're neglecting them."

"They didn't mind at all, love. Truly. They want you to spend all the time you can with your human parents."

'While they're still alive,' I thought to myself. I knew he was thinking it, too, and just didn't want to say it aloud. Still, neither Charlie nor Renée was what I would consider "old" yet. Both were still in good health and they were fairly active. There was a good chance they would be around for another thirty or forty years – or even longer. But how much longer would Renée continue to believe our plastic surgery story? I had begun to appreciate my time with her much more than I did when I was human. I was glad she had called, even if it did interrupt our time with my "other" family.

"Bella, you didn't mind much that I saved the news about Henrique for Christmas Day, did you?" Edward asked.

I looked over at him and he looked truly concerned. "Of course not!" I said, laughing. "It was great news, and I know it took some planning to be able to get Kaure on the phone. Besides, you only kept it to yourself for one day. You were really worried I would be upset?"

"A little," he said, relaxing somewhat. "I haven't forgotten the talk we had a few weeks ago. I was determined never to hide anything from you again, but I got the news the day before Christmas and I just thought it would be a nice surprise."

"It was perfect, Edward. Really." I moved my shield for a moment so he could see that my thoughts matched my words.

"Thank you," he said, relief apparent in his voice.

"So what was it like when Eli was pulling your memories?" I asked.

"It was fun. I actually enjoyed it," he said, looking over at me with an easy smile.

"Really?" I said in surprise.

"You were worried that I didn't really want to do it, weren't you?" he asked.

"Weren't you worried that he might pull something you'd rather not share with the whole family?" I responded.

"Maybe a little, at first, since I wasn't sure what he might find," he admitted. "But it was fascinating when he showed me my own memory index, and I was able to help guide him in selecting memories to pull. Most of my index was so faded that there was little hope of recovering anything, so there wasn't much for him to find. The memories of Watch were pretty blurry, but with Eli's help, I was able to recall them more clearly than I could when I first remembered him, when we found that picture in Chicago. It was nice to recall a little more about him. And I'm glad he found the memory about my enlistment attempts as well – he gave me another memory of my mother."

"But we all laughed at you," I said, feeling horrible that I hadn't even thought about how emotional it might have been for him to be shown memories of his mother. "Had you never remembered it before?"

"I had forgotten that I remembered it," he said. "Obviously it was still stored, but nothing had ever triggered it before. Eli thought I pulled it myself when Emmett asked for something embarrassing, but I'm not sure I could have recalled it without being able to see my index. I didn't mind everyone laughing, though. That was the whole point – to provide something entertaining – wasn't it? You were _supposed_ to smile."

"So you were just pretending it didn't bother you? Just so your family could have a good laugh?" I asked.

"No," he insisted, shaking his head. "Even though the memory may have been horribly embarrassing when I was human, even I can see the humor now. I'll admit that seeing my mother again affected me a little, but it was in a good way. It was a good memory of her, and I'm happy to have it back. Besides, it helped distract everyone from Emmett, and I owed him some favors."

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me what he was thinking that was so funny, are you?" I asked.

"No, I'm afraid that will always be Emmett's little secret," he answered. He started laughing again, and laughed harder and harder until I eventually joined him.

I still had no idea what was so funny, but we laughed for a long time, and there was something cathartic about it. We were both in an exceptionally good mood as we walked into the airport.

* * *

**A/N: **

**Many of you will recognize Edward's memory of the enlistment office from javamomma0921's story, "The Life and Death of Edward Anthony Masen." Thanks to Jen for letting me reference it in my story!**

**SM's Official Illustrated Guide finally became available during the time between my last post and this one, and I added some comments in my profile recently regarding that.  
**

**Also, I wanted to recommend a unique story I've been following for the last year or so which is complete now. It is "Post Mortem" by ThisIsTrueImmortality. It's an X-files crossover, but it will still make sense even if you've never watched X-files. The story is from the perspective of two FBI agents who are investigating some strange murders in Forks, and the Cullens quickly become suspects. It uses canon characters and is set during Bella's recovery from being attacked by James. It's in my Favorites if you'd like to check it out. :)**


	33. Jacksonville

Chapter 33: Jacksonville

Renée and Phil's house was a short twenty-minute drive from the airport, even with Renée driving. She had done most of the talking in the car, explaining Phil's whereabouts and telling us about her newest hobby.

She said Phil had decided to stay at his parents' house for another night, since two of his siblings were still in visiting for the holidays and he knew Renée would like some quality time with me while Edward and I were in town. I was a little glad that he wouldn't be around the whole time; though I didn't dislike him, we had never formed a close relationship, and things were just easier when we didn't have to worry about him noticing our oddities.

After explaining that we would need to go pick up Phil from her in-laws' house in St. Augustine the next day, she talked excitedly the rest of the way home about the custom jewelry she had started making. She had purchased the components from a craft store and had already made several necklaces and bracelets. She was wearing one of the necklaces, and I noted that it was very pretty and was in line with the latest styles. Alice had been wearing something similar on Christmas Day.

So far, Renée had only made a few pieces for herself and some of her friends, but she was thinking of trying to sell them online. I wondered if we could help her with that; she could use an extra source of income. Maybe I could get Alice to do some marketing. I smiled, thinking of how surprised Renée would be when her business took off so quickly. But would she stick with it? Her hobbies usually lasted no longer than three months.

"Is Phil still looking for a job?" I asked as Renée unlocked the front door to let us into the house.

"Oh, didn't I tell you? He got a job coaching for one of the local high schools! He starts when the new semester begins in January. It doesn't pay as much as he'd like, but I think he'll enjoy it, and he said it will give us more than enough to make our house payment. I told you that you didn't need to worry!" She smiled brightly at me while she set her purse down in the kitchen. "Why don't you two go ahead and take your things upstairs and get settled in? I'm going to look for those other jewelry pieces I wanted to show you – I know they're around here somewhere. I think I hid them when Phil's nieces were here a few days ago – they're toddlers and they get into everything. Then we can get something to eat. I thought we'd take it easy tonight and then do some sightseeing tomorrow before we go pick up Phil."

We took our bags upstairs to the spare bedroom and quickly unpacked.

"Have you been to St. Augustine before?" Edward asked.

"No, I haven't. What's in St. Augustine?"

"Renée was thinking of taking us to see some of the historic sites. There's the Castillo de San Marcos, the Oldest Wooden School House, the Old St. Augustine Village, Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth, a lighthouse, and some museums. I've never been there either – I think it will be an enjoyable day."

"It sounds like a _busy_ day," I said, wondering if Renée would really try to cram that many activities into one day. Knowing her, she probably would. "Do you think –" I began but stopped at hearing Renée's shriek coming from downstairs in the kitchen.

"Don't breathe," Edward warned.

I froze in panic, immediately recognizing what that meant. Blood. Renée must have hurt herself.

Edward gripped my arms tightly and I let him lead me to the bedroom window. He slid it open and we jumped out together, dropping about twelve feet to the ground. I didn't dare take a breath even outside the house. I was thankful for the grip he had on me, but I wasn't sure if he would be able to hold me back if I were to catch the scent. I had thus far, in my life as a vampire, managed to avoid being dangerously close to free-flowing blood, and I did not intend for my mother to be my first test. Judging from Edward's reaction, this was more than a small scratch. We walked quickly – a little too quickly – down the sidewalk along the residential street until we were about two blocks away.

"I'll call 911," Edward said, pulling out his phone.

"Is it that serious?" I asked, growing even more alarmed. "What happened?"

"She fell from a ladder. She had been looking for her jewelry and I hadn't been paying attention until I caught her panicked thoughts as she fell. She hit her arm and shoulder pretty hard and scraped her head. I don't think it's all that serious, but _we_ can't go in there to help her, and she passed out, so she can't call for help herself."

"Why don't you run back in and check on her?" I asked.

"Are you insane?"

I was out of air, so I took a slow, cautious breath and he tightened his hold on me. "I can't smell it," I assured him. "I'll keep walking to get a little further from the house. I promise, I won't go back there until you've left to take her to the doctor."

"That's not what I'm worried about. You want _me_ to go back in there? With your _mother_? I'm not Carlisle, Bella. I don't trust myself."

"Well, _I_ trust you," I insisted, taking the phone from his hand. "Renée hates ambulances as much as I used to. And it will look funny if we call an ambulance for a little scrape on the head."

"She could have broken her arm, and she should be checked for a concussion," he argued.

"You can drive her to the ER. That's what a normal person would do. Edward, you've been around blood plenty of times. You have the control. You know you do." I moved my shield, letting my thoughts back up my words.

"She's coming to," he said, loosening his grip on me. He glanced back in the direction of the house and then looked at me again, seeming torn.

"Phil?" I heard Renée call out weakly, her familiar voice standing out from all the background noise of the neighbors' conversations even from our current distance. After a brief pause, she seemed to remember he wasn't there. "Bella? Edward?"

"_Go on. You can do it." _I thought to him. As much as I knew he was uncomfortable with it, I knew that he would be fine, and I hated of thinking of Renée all alone in her kitchen floor, needing help.

He turned and ran back to the house.

I walked a little further but listened for Edward and Renée, all the while holding my breath and remaining very conscious of the direction of the wind – if it should shift direction I would need to move further away.

"Renée! What happened?" I heard Edward ask.

"I think I fell," she responded, sounding confused. Then she groaned, obviously in pain. "My arm hurts!"

"Let me get you something for your head and I'll drive you to the hospital," Edward said.

There was a pause in the conversation and I imagined he was probably cleaning and covering the head wound, though I couldn't hear anything.

I heard Renée gasp. "My arm!" she shrieked hysterically. Then there was silence again.

Edward sighed. "She passed out again," he said, apparently talking to me now. "Her head wound appears to be superficial but her shoulder is dislocated."

"_Can you fix it? Before she wakes up?"_

"I'll call Carlisle."

I heard him speaking to Carlisle on the phone. He was using lots of medical jargon, and I couldn't make out Carlisle's end of the conversation, but I gathered that he was talking Edward through the procedure.

"Got it!" I heard Edward exclaim, his relief apparent. He thanked Carlisle and ended the call.

"Edward?" Renée asked, sound confused as she came to again. "What happened?"

"I think you fell from the ladder. I was just getting a bandage for your head and you passed out again."

"I remember now," she said. "My arm hurt… But it feels okay now." There was a short pause. "Did you clean up the blood? I remember seeing blood…" She trailed off, sounding confused.

"Yes, I wiped it up. It's a minor cut, but you know how head wounds can bleed."

"You didn't have to clean up! I'm so sorry. . ."

"It was no problem. I'll drive you to the ER now. You're going to need x-rays to make sure nothing's broken."

"No, I'm fine. I think I'll just go lie down for a while."

"I must insist, Renée," Edward said firmly. "You just said your arm hurt. It needs to be x-rayed – it could be broken."

"Where's Bella? Isn't she coming with us?" she asked. I was relieved that she seemed to be giving in so easily.

"She's upstairs. I think it's best if she stays here – I don't need both of you passing out on me."

"Oh, that's right," Renée said, laughing. "She passes out when she's around blood. I remember how that used to scare me when she was little."

I heard the car start, so I walked around the block to make sure she wouldn't see me as they drove by. Then I returned to Renée's house and climbed back in the window which we had left open. Still holding my breath, I went downstairs and opened all the doors and turned on a fan. I was fairly certain Edward had already cleaned everything with bleach, but I wanted to be safe. After a few minutes, I cautiously inhaled. I was right; bleach was the predominant scent, and there was only the faintest trace of blood.

They returned about three hours later. Renée was right; her arm was fine. The extent of her injuries was a bruised shoulder and a small cut on the side of her head, so we were able to avoid telling tell her that her shoulder had been dislocated. Edward explained later that he wanted the x-rays done to make sure he hadn't caused any fractures when he was fixing it. He had managed to sneak a peek at the x-rays himself and had been relieved that they showed no damage.

We spent the rest of the evening making sure Renée took it easy - we just sat around in her living room talking and watching a movie. Renée went to bed early and advised us to do the same because she wanted to get an early start for St. Augustine in the morning in order to have more time to show us around.

* * *

As planned, Renée was up bright and early the next morning, and she was pleased to find that we were "already" awake when she checked on us.

It took nearly an hour to get to St. Augustine, but we still got there in time to watch the sunrise from the grounds of the Castillo de San Marcos. The structure itself didn't open for about another hour and a half, so we had a relaxing stroll around the grounds before everything opened and Renée took us on a whirlwind tour of the town.

We went up in the lighthouse, saw Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth, visited the Oldest Wooden School House, and went on a tour in the Old St. Augustine Village before Renée realized she was hungry. She had brought granola bars to eat in the car for breakfast, so we had managed to avoid food up until lunch time. I had been dreading the part of our visit when we might be forced to eat.

A bell jingled as Renée opened the door to the restaurant. Edward and I followed her in, and I was immediately hit with the overwhelming scent of pizza. The space inside was not very large. It was narrow, with a counter and display case along the right-hand side and a single row of booths to the left. We had arrived just past noon, and the place was packed. It was not often that I had to be in such a small, enclosed space with so many humans; I held my breath but my throat burned more than usual despite having hunted only two days earlier. I was about to mention the lack of seating as an excuse to try another restaurant, when a family of four began vacating one of the booths.

"You save our table, and I'll go order," Renée said. "You absolutely _have _to try their 'Old Fashioned' pizza. It's the best pizza I've ever eaten in my entire life! You're going to love this." She started to turn toward the counter and then stopped and looked back at us, suddenly doubtful. "You _can_ eat pizza, can't you?"

"Of course. That sounds really good," Edward answered smoothly.

I took his cue and voiced my agreement. We had told her, along with the special agent story, that we had a special diet due to our job, and we had sometimes used that as an excuse not to eat. But we couldn't overdo it and risk raising her suspicion.

"Great!" Renée said, smiling broadly. She hurried off to get in line to order.

"Sorry," Edward mouthed to me.

I wrinkled my nose in response. I knew that Renée must have been noticing our nonexistent appetites; otherwise, Edward would have made an excuse for us. The night before, we had both claimed to be too full from our huge lunch to eat anything for dinner; Renée hadn't actually cooked, due to her accident, so it had seemed an easy opportunity to refuse without offending her. Then this morning it had been simple to fake eating the granola bars since Renée was not looking at us while she was driving.

"Are you okay?" he asked quietly.

"I'll be fine," I answered, setting my shield aside so that he could see for himself. I inhaled slowly, forcing myself to get used to the smell. I deliberately concentrated on the stench of the food, rather than on the smell of so many humans all around us in that confined space. I found it helped when I focused on picking out the scents of individual ingredients. After a few minutes I began to feel somewhat desensitized and it was more tolerable.

It took Renée about ten minutes to get through the line to order, and she soon returned with a huge pizza. There was a surprising lack of toppings, for which I was thankful. It appeared to be simply a cheese pizza with a special sauce. I could pick out the scent of a number of spices that had most certainly never been in the pepperoni pizzas that Charlie always had delivered in Forks.

I reached for a piece and enthusiastically took a bite since Renée was watching for my reaction. "This _is_ really good!" I exclaimed, surprising myself with how sincere I managed to sound.

Edward took a bite of his as well. "It sure beats what we've been eating in the campus cafeteria," he said with a grin.

Renée beamed at our approval as if she had made the pizza herself. "Phil introduced me to it," she told us. "We usually stop by here on our way home from visiting his parents, but we usually get it to go and warm it up after we get home. It's even better fresh!"

Edward nodded in agreement as he took a second bite, looking convincingly hungry. Renée was looking at Edward as she continued to eat her own slice of pizza, and he was pretending not to notice her stare. I took advantage of her distraction to tear my piece in two and hide the larger of them under some paper napkins I had placed next to me in my seat. I wondered if she was really getting suspicious of our eating habits.

"Can I ask you something, Edward?" Renée asked as she reached for her second slice.

Edward had stiffened slightly as she began her question but he casually replied, "Go ahead."

"You look like you already know what I'm about to ask," Renée said, laughing.

"Sorry," Edward said. "I'm just a little tired." He took yet another bite of his pizza.

"Oh, you didn't sleep well last night?" she asked, concerned. "Do you need more blankets? I know it can get cold in that guest room. I'm sorry; I should have turned the air conditioner off since Phil's not here."

"We slept fine, Mom," I interjected quickly before she could begin another sentence. "We've just had a busy morning."

"Oh. Well, anyway, about what I was getting ready to ask – if you don't want to talk about it, Edward, just say so. But I was thinking about that time you left for several months back before you two were married – the time your family moved away for a while. That was related to your secret government job, wasn't it?" Renée leaned forward slightly. Despite her apparent nervousness in asking the question, she seemed proud of herself for having figured this out.

"Yes," Edward said, nodding. "Shortly after I met Bella, she discovered my true identity; she figured out that my life as a high school senior was just a cover for what I really do."

"Were you worried that you would get in trouble because she blew your cover?" Renée prompted.

"I should have been," he answered. "I should have been more concerned for what could happen to _her,_ but I selfishly ignored the dangers. Remember, she hadn't gone through the approval process like you did. I let myself fall in love with her and started telling myself I could protect her. I should have realized after Phoenix – "

"Phoenix?" Renée asked, interrupting. The confusion on her face slowly gave way to understanding. "Bella didn't slip and fall, did she? Someone _pushed_ her down those steps!"

"It was a little more complex than that, but you're right - it was not a random accident," Edward admitted.

"I thought you said your job wasn't dangerous!" Renée exclaimed, turning to me with an accusing glare.

"I wasn't part of the agency then," I reminded her in a soft tone, hoping to calm her down. "So I didn't have the protections that Edward had; I didn't have the protections that I do now."

"She became a target for a criminal who had slipped through our security net," Edward said, continuing with his explanation. "And we intercepted him too late to prevent her injuries."

"She would have been killed, wouldn't she?" Renée asked, her voice rising. "If you and Carlisle hadn't been there . . ."

"Edward saved my life," I told her. "He and his whole family risked their lives to rescue to me."

"You wouldn't have been in the situation if it wasn't for me," Edward protested. "And there was very little risk that any of my family would have been hurt; we had him severely outnumbered."

"So where is this guy now?" Renée demanded, looking as if she were ready hunt him down and strangle him herself. "Your people captured him, right? You said you had him outnumbered?"

"Our mission was accomplished," Edward told her. "He won't be hurting anyone else."

"So what happened?" Renée persisted. "Was he convicted? He went to prison? "

"I can't give you the specifics, but I assure you he can't do any harm where he is now."

Renée's lips pressed into a thin line, obviously displeased with his vagueness. "How often do you deal with this kind of danger?" she demanded. "And don't try to tell me it's not dangerous. I don't care what kind of 'protections' you have – tracking down and capturing criminals is a dangerous job!"

"That's not what our job is," I tried to explain. "What happened in Phoenix is not what we normally do. And you know we can't tell you what our assignments are, but there's absolutely no need for you to be worrying about us."

"The situation in Phoenix was highly unusual," Edward added. "I'm not sure I should even tell you this, but we were dealing with a rogue member of our own agency – that's why it was so dangerous. It wasn't a typical assignment, Renée. In fact, it wasn't an assignment at all. It was just something that happened and had to be dealt with."

"But how can you know that nothing like that will happen again?" Renée asked, sounding unconvinced.

"Mom, there's always a remote possibility that something could go wrong, but the same is true with anyone. For example, you really scared me yesterday when you hurt yourself. What if you had gotten a concussion or some other serious injury? "

"That's not the same thing," Renée insisted. "That was just an accident. I slipped. It wasn't related to my chosen occupation."

"Saying our job is dangerous because of what happened in Phoenix is like saying that your jewelry-making hobby is dangerous because you fell from a ladder while you were looking for your jewelry," I said. "If you hadn't made any jewelry, you wouldn't have fallen. But there's no reason to suspect that you would be more likely to fall in the future if you keep making jewelry, because it doesn't normally involve climbing."

"Okay, I see your point," Renée said with a sigh. "But why was someone from the agency trying to kill you?

"He was psycho," I said.

"He focused on Bella because of her association with me," Edward said. "He really wanted to get at me, but Bella was an easier target since she wasn't part of the agency yet."

There was a brief silence as Renée stared at Edward, looking uncertain. "So you felt guilty about Bella getting hurt," she said when she finally spoke. "You still do; I can tell. Was that why you left?"

"I did consider leaving right then. I thought she should take you up on your offer to move back in with you and Phil. But she was determined to return to Forks and I wasn't strong enough to leave her."

"As I recall, you didn't seem able to leave the hospital room," Renée teased, eyeing Edward with a slight smile. "I could tell even then how devoted you were to her."

"I told myself that I could protect her; I tried to justify my continued presence in her life by telling myself that danger had an inexplicable way of continuing to find her and that I needed to keep her safe." Edward shook his head slowly. "Then on her eighteenth birthday the unthinkable happened and I concluded that the danger she seemed to attract was due to her proximity to me and my family. I thought leaving was the only way to keep her safe; that's the only reason I was able make myself go."

"So what happened on her birthday?" Renée asked with a puzzled look in her eyes. Upon receiving no immediate response from Edward, whose face bore a mask of perfect composure, she turned to me for the answer. "Were you hurt again? I don't remember hearing about you having any more injuries just before he left."

"Another agent made a mistake and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time," I said. "I fell onto a stack of glass dishes and cut my arm. It really wasn't that bad; Carlisle sewed me up in their living room."

"You didn't fall; I pushed you," Edward said, closing his eyes in self-loathing. "Renée, the mistake that other agent made was one I could just as easily have made myself at any time; it was one that I had come too close to making on too many occasions. I thought if I left, she would be safe. I thought she would get over me and would be able to live a normal life. But I was sorely mistaken on every count."

"You've never forgiven yourself," Renée said softly, almost as if she were speaking to herself. "Everything has turned out fine, but you still blame yourself, don't you?"

Edward looked up and met her eyes. "I regret leaving. It was the biggest mistake I ever made. I hate that I put Bella through so much pain."

"You've got to forgive yourself, Edward. I know Bella has, and I have too," Renée said.

"You saw what I did to your daughter," Edward said, looking at Renée in wonder. "I've never understood how you forgave me so quickly. That first time we visited you in Florida I had been worried about how you would react to seeing me again, but you welcomed me into your home. And now, even after hearing the specifics of my offenses, you still harbor no ill-will."

"Edward, you're human," she said, smiling as she placed her hand over his. "We all make mistakes. You've learned from yours, and you won't make the same ones again. You and Bella were meant for each other. Do you really think your relationship would be what it is now if you'd never had that separation?"

Edward just stared at her for a moment, looking stunned. "You're absolutely right," he said when he finally spoke. Was he really starting to accept the truth of her words? I wondered what he had seen in her mind that had kept him from rejecting her words.

"You realized you didn't want to live without her, didn't you?" Renée asked.

"I realized I _couldn't_ live without her," Edward corrected. "And I learned not to try to make decisions like that without her input. Even with all my training, I didn't always know what was best for us. I learned to listen to her."

"She needed you as much as you needed her, you know," Renée said.

Renée's combination of insightfulness and obliviousness was truly unparalleled. She accepted our secret agent story unquestioningly as explanation for all of our oddities, and yet she could see to the heart of Edward's guilt and make him understand what I had been trying to express to him for years.

"I want to hear how you got back together," Renée said, smiling as though anticipating a sweet and romantic story. "Charlie said Bella went and found you in California?"

"Right," he answered. "I had been miserable without her, and I was nearly ready to come back on my own. Then there was a miscommunication and I was told she had died. I had no desire to continue living without her, and, well, I was about to do something very dangerous. Bella found me and stopped me from getting myself killed."

Renée looked horrified. "I had no idea!" she said. "Charlie had something about Bella cliff diving and some sort of misunderstanding, but I had no idea you – " she stopped with finishing the sentence and just shook her head. "So when you realized Bella was still alive…"

"I wasn't strong enough to stay away from her any longer. It was only a question of whether she could forgive me."

"That was also when the government found out that I knew about the program," I told her, thinking of the Volturi. "And you already know the rest of the story – that's how I was invited to join the agency. Edward didn't want me to at first because he didn't think I truly understood what all was involved, but I finally convinced him that it was what I really wanted."

"Another case of me learning to listen to her," Edward added, speaking to Renée while holding his eyes on mine. "I had to give up thinking I knew what was best for her. And she was right, as usual. She fit right into the program, and the last ten years have been simply amazing." He gently caressed the side of my face with the backs of his fingers, and I just smiled at him, happy to see him looking so content. The last ten years had, indeed, been amazing.

"You two are so perfect together!" Renée gushed. "You're still just like newlyweds!"

"You and Phil still seem pretty happy too," I remarked, grateful for an opportunity to shift the focus of the conversation to safer topics. I hadn't seen Phil since they visited at our house a few weeks earlier, but he had seemed just as devoted to her as ever. Neither of them was given to public displays of affection, but it was easy to tell from the way they looked at each other that they were still very much in love.

"We are," Renée agreed, smiling. "Marrying him was one of the few really good decisions I've made. He's so patient with me and he's always so supportive when I want to try something new, like the jewelry I've been making lately. And he seems to sense somehow when I need space, but he's always there for me when I need him close. I've never had to tell him; he just knows. "

She continued to list Phil's positive qualities for a bit longer, and we made it through the rest of the meal without any more heavy topics of conversation. By the time we left, Edward had eaten two whole slices of pizza and had managed to hide most of a third one. I escaped with eating only a few bites.

* * *

About an hour later, we arrived at Phil's parents' house. They lived in a small home in an older neighborhood, and I suspected it may have been the house Phil grew up in. The smell of food grew stronger as Renée led us around to a side door.

"Come in, come in! You two will catch your death of cold in those short sleeves!" his mother exclaimed as she opened the door, which I soon saw led directly into the kitchen.

"Sixty-nine degrees feels pretty warm to us, Mrs. Dwyer," Edward said pleasantly. "It was snowing at our house when we left."

"Well, sit down," she commanded, gesturing toward the kitchen chairs. Her tone of voice gave the impression that she disagreed about the weather but was not going to argue. "And you can call me Barbara. You must be Eddie and Bella?"

"Edward," I corrected her. "Edward and Bella."

"Well, Edward, then," she said with a frown. "I hope you all are hungry. I made extra since Phil said you were coming."

"I'm really sorry; we already ate," I told her, giving my most apologetic look. I was glad to have a real excuse for once. "I don't think I could eat another bite."

Barbara glared at Renée, who seemed to be trying to calm herself.

"I told you I was taking them to the 'Old Fashioned' pizza place," Renée said in a controlled voice. "You really didn't need to cook for us."

Barbara pressed her lips together and her mouth quivered slightly. "Well, I kept it warm, if anybody wants anything," she said, turning her back to us to stir something on the stove.

"I want some seconds," Phil said, walking into the kitchen with a scruffy little dog trailing behind him. He had been watching sports on TV with his father; I had heard them in the other room.

"Well, there's plenty," Barbara said dejectedly.

Phil went to the stove and began filling his plate from the pans on the stove and the platters that were sitting next to it on the countertop. The dog stayed right at his side and watched wistfully as he piled food onto his plate.

"I think I'll have some too," Edward said, to my great surprise. "It just smells too good to pass up."

Barbara beamed at him as he reached for a plate, but the dog whined and dashed off to the other corner of the room when Edward took a step closer to Phil. The corner it ran to just happened to be the one with its food and water bowls, so Barbara mistook its dislike for Edward for hunger and went to get the bag of dog food.

Edward turned to me and whispered, "You don't have to eat anything. She's not suspicious."

I reached for a plate anyway. If Edward was willing to suffer through this, I wasn't going to make him do it alone. Neither of us had had a chance to cough up our lunch yet, so at least we'd only have to do that once. I dipped out an extra-small serving of each item.

Renée reluctantly followed our example and took a plate from the stack, but she placed even less food on hers.

Phil paused next to her before returning to the living room and rubbed her shoulders briefly with his free hand while whispering in her ear. "Sorry… I told her not to cook, but you know how well she listens."

Renée gave him a slight smile and rolled her eyes conspiratorially.

"Thanks," he mouthed to her, gesturing to her plate with his eyes. He gave her arm a slight squeeze and returned to the living room with his food.

Barbara had filled the dog's bowl by the time we sat down at the table, but the dog wasn't eating. It stayed in the corner, watching us with its head resting on its front paws.

Barbara came over and sat down directly across from me. I had managed to sneak some pasta salad into my purse, but it would be very difficult to continue that approach if she was going to sit there watching me eat. I pretended to nibble on my roll and hoped she would look away.

"Phil told me about all that plastic surgery you had," Barbara said, looking at me intently, "but I always thought he was exaggerating. This just beats all. I don't think I would have recognized you. Of course, you're a few years older than you were at Phil's wedding, but I wouldn't have known you. I guess I can see why you did it, though. You were kind of plain before, weren't you?"

I was so taken aback by the bluntness and rudeness of her comment that I had no idea how to respond. Just then, Renée dropped her fork. I instinctively reached to catch it, remembering just in time that I should allow it clatter to the floor. Fortunately, no one saw my hand moving so quickly under the table.

"Are you sure you aren't confusing her with someone else?" Edward asked with forced politeness. "My wife was stunningly beautiful even before her surgery."

"Oh, of course," Barbara said, seeming to finally realize that her words had been offensive. "I didn't mean it like that. I just – "

"Excuse me," Renée said abruptly, interrupting her. She placed the fork she had just retrieved back on the table with a little more force than necessary, and then got up and walked out of the room. I wondered if she was headed to the bathroom to "hide" again until she could calm down.

I had felt compelled to eat a couple of bites while Barbara was talking to me, since she had been watching me so intently. I had tried the mashed potatoes, thinking their softness and smooth consistency might make them easier to swallow, but they felt thick and slimy. It was like trying to drink greasy mud. I had barely been able to get the bite down without letting my disgust show on my face. The creamed corn was just as bad, only lumpy.

When Barbara turned to watch Renée leave the room, I noticed the dog looking longingly at our food and made a really bad split-second decision: I tore my slice of ham in two and tossed one piece to the dog. My aim was perfect – the dog caught the bite in its mouth. However, rather than eating it all immediately, it dropped the meat on the floor, pushed it around a bit, picked it up again, and then bit some off and chewed, letting the unchewed portion drop back onto the floor. The dog's nails clicked against the vinyl floor as it grappled with the morsel, causing Barbara to look that direction.

"Max!" she exclaimed. "How did you get that?"

She looked at Edward and me, confused. Edward's ham was still on his plate, untouched. Mine was half gone. "Did you give that to him?" she demanded, looking directly at me.

"Of course not!" I lied.

"You didn't see him jump up and take a piece from the platter?" Edward asked.

"No, I didn't," Barbara said, the suspicion in her voice beginning to waver. "He's never done that before."

"He's a smart little dog," Edward commented.

"But the game's not over," I heard Phil say in the other room.

"I don't care," I heard Renée say through her teeth.

A few seconds later they came into the kitchen together.

"We'd better be getting back home, Mom," Phil said, setting his empty plate next to the sink. "Thanks for the food – it was delicious," he said, giving her a hug.

"But Bella and Eddie are still eating, Renée," Barbara said pointedly. "Surely you don't have to go yet?"

"I just finished," Edward said, popping the last bite into his mouth.

"And I really can't eat any more," I told her. "I'm sorry. It was delicious, but I'm just too full."

Barbara looked disapprovingly at Renée's nearly untouched plate but didn't comment on it.

We said our goodbyes and were soon in the car, headed back to Jacksonville.

* * *

It was a relief to get back to Renée's house. Phil, predictably, went straight to the TV to catch the end of his game. Renée had a headache and excused herself to go lie down for a while. Edward and I each took a turn going to the bathroom to cough up the contents of our stomachs. As disgusting as the process was, it felt so good to be rid of the human food. Since the time of my transformation I had never consumed so much indigestible matter in one day. Edward had eaten significantly more than I had – about the two pieces of pizza plus several bites at Barbara's house. I found the rest of his home-cooked meal in my purse.

"Sorry," he said with a grin. "I'll help clean it."

"I had always thought Renée was exaggerating when she complained about her mother-in-law," I said. "That woman's even worse than what she described."

"And she has no idea how annoying she is," Edward said. "She really thought that Renée was the one being inconsiderate."

Edward's phone buzzed, and he looked confused after he answered it.

"There's no one there," he said. "It was Alice's number, but the signal must have been lost."

"Do you think she was trying to warn us about something?" I asked, wondering if the sun was going to come out earlier than she had previously predicted. What if something was about to happen to Renée or Phil?

"It's probably nothing," he said. "I'm sure she'll try again later when her phone stops acting up." He tried to call her back but it went straight to voicemail.

I went to look out the window. The sky was still full of thick, gray clouds, as far as I could see.

"What are Phil and Renée doing?" I asked.

"Renée is trying to take a nap but she's having trouble because she's still fuming about her mother-in-law. Phil is absorbed in his game. I don't hear anything of concern from the neighbors, either. We'll just have to wait for her to call back."

We worked together to wipe off the items that food had landed on inside of the purse.

"Why do you always have to be such a gentleman?" I asked teasingly as we flushed the rest of the food from my purse down the toilet. It was one thing to be polite, but I did feel that filling up a plate just to spare Barbara's feelings was a little above and beyond the call of duty.

Edward shrugged. "I was already going to have to cough up the pizza, so I thought I might as well put on a good show for Barbara. Besides, I thought my gentlemanly behavior was one of the things you loved about me." He gave me that crooked smile as he continued cleaning the items in my purse that gotten food residue on them.

"It is," I said.

We put the cleaned items on a towel on our dresser to dry, and then Edward sat down on the bed and leaned back against the headboard.

"Join me?" he said.

I sat down and snuggled next to him, sighing contentedly as he put his arm around me. Then I thought of Alice's call again. "Should you try calling her again?" I asked.

"She'll call back," he said confidently, turning his face toward mine. He kissed me – a long, slow, lingering kiss that sent chills up my spine.

"You're trying to distract me, aren't you?" I asked, not really minding this form of distraction.

To my surprise, he sighed and pulled away. "Yes, I guess I was."

"You're worried about Alice's call, too?" I asked.

"To be completely honest, I am, a little. Something just doesn't feel right. But I don't want you to worry - you know how I tend to overreact at times."

"That is true," I conceded.

He tried Alice's number again, and once more it went to voice mail.

"You know, I think we could both use a little distraction," I whispered in his ear.

"I think you're right," he murmured. I closed my eyes as his lips moved to my neck. Once I was fully focused on him, I moved my shield aside.

About ten seconds later, the phone buzzed again.

"Yes?" Edward answered, immediately pulling himself back to an upright position.

I heard Carlisle's panic-stricken voice on the other end: "_Alice is_ _gone_."


	34. Journey

Chapter 34 - Journey

"What do you mean, she's gone?" Edward demanded.

"Alice is gone, Edward," Carlisle responded, speaking rapidly. "She told Jasper she was going shopping, but he found a note after she left. It said, 'I must go. Please do not try to follow. It's what they want.' We tracked her scent as far as the ocean. She went to a field not far from Concord and left with Demetri, Alec, and some others whose scents we didn't recognize. We found her car there next to the field, along with the remains of her phone."

"What's the plan?"

"We don't have one yet. How soon can you and Bella get back?"

"We'll leave immediately. We should be there in about five hours."

"I'll feel better when you're both safely home. Everyone else is there, and Jasper and I will be home shortly. Tanya called Eleazar and they're headed our way."

"We'll get her back," Edward vowed. "They won't hurt her; she's too valuable to them."

They ended the call, and Edward immediately pulled me into a tight embrace. We clung to each other for a moment, and my mind raced as I considered the possibilities of what could happen next. It struck me suddenly that even with as much as I had been worried about the constant threat of the Volturi, I had never truly thought they would make a move against us so soon. I had assumed there would be some warning. My thoughts were interrupted when I heard Renée moving about in her room down the hall, and despite my reluctance to be away from Edward even for a minute, I whispered, "Let me go say goodbye to Renée." I knew it might be my last one.

I saw the fresh wave of pain in his eyes and realized I was still unshielded.

"Go on," he said. "I'll make some calls and arrange a private jet for the trip home."

I knocked gently on Renée's door.

"Come in," she called out.

I went in and sat down on her bed.

"What's wrong?" she asked, her smile shifting to an expression of concern as she met my eyes. "You're leaving early, aren't you? Something come up with your job?"

"Yes," I said, forcing my voice to be steady. "Another agent needs our help. We have to leave immediately. But I'm so glad we came to visit, Mom."

"I can drive you to the airport," she said, sitting up. "I'll be ready in five minutes, okay?"

I hadn't thought of how we would get to the airport. Running through such a densely populated area was not an option, and we had not rented a car. Waiting even five minutes for Renée to get ready, plus the extra time it would take for her to drive us, was time we didn't want to lose. "Actually, we'd like to borrow your car, if that's okay," I told her. "You can't come with us, but we'll send the car back later this evening."

Renée looked slightly disappointed, but nodded. "Whatever you need," she said. She looked at me for a moment before adding, "This mission is dangerous, isn't it?"

"No," I said, forcing a smile. "Just urgent."

"If . . . If anything happens . . . would the government contact me?" she asked.

"We'll be fine, Mom," I assured her, willing it to be true. "But if anything ever did happen, they would deny the very existence of the program. Don't ever try to contact the government about us. I'll call you when I can, okay? It could be a few days… or maybe longer."

Renée pulled the keys from her purse and handed them to me. Then she stretched her arms out for a hug, and as I carefully embraced her I wondered if I would ever see her again. It pained me to lie to her about something so important, but there was nothing to be gained by letting her know how dangerous this "mission" could be. And it killed me that I couldn't tell her about Renesmee. This might be the last chance to tell her she had a granddaughter, yet there was no way I could explain to her that I had given birth to the young lady she knew as Edward's sister. It simply couldn't be explained. And telling her the complete truth – even if I thought she could handle it – wasn't an option. It would put her in too much danger. I heard Phil downstairs cheering as his team scored and felt very grateful to him for his presence in her life – it was heartening to know that if anything happened to me, she would still be okay.

Edward stopped in briefly and apologized for leaving so early, and after a final plea from Renée for us to be careful, we took off for the airport.

The private jet was waiting for us, and I was only mildly surprised when I realized Edward was piloting it himself. The flight home was uneventful, and we talked very little during the trip. My mind was on Alice and the Volturi, and I knew Edward's was as well. I felt the same apprehension I had felt ten years earlier – it would be unbearable to lose Edward, or Renesmee, or any of our family. And yet there were some ways in which it didn't feel quite as hopeless as it had felt ten years ago. I knew now that I could protect my family from Alec, Jane, and several of the other talented ones. I knew now that we would at least have a fighting chance if it came down to a physical fight. And with our new allies, Eli and Cora, we might even have an advantage.

I wondered what Alice had seen that had caused her to go meet the Volturi guards and willingly leave with them. Was she trying to sacrifice herself for the rest of us? Or could she have chosen that path because it offered our family a glimmer of hope?

When we arrived at Carlisle and Esme's house, everything looked much the same as it had two days earlier, but Alice was missing from her usual spot and the atmosphere was very different. The festivities of Christmas Day seemed incomprehensible now.

"We were just discussing whether we should plan an immediate rescue mission," Carlisle informed us as we entered the room. His eyes darted toward Jasper, whose growl was making his opinion on that matter was quite obvious; it was a wonder that Carlisle had managed to get him to return to the house after they had found Alice's scent mixed with Demetri's and Alec's.

"We should've taken care of this right after Aro's visit," Rosalie muttered just loud enough for all of us to hear.

"Maybe there's some explanation," Esme said desperately. "How do we know that they plan to keep her?"

"Esme makes a good point," Carlisle said. "We must consider all possibilities. There is a chance that Alice could return on her own. She willingly went to meet them, and we must remember that her gift often causes her to make decisions that we don't understand at first. We don't know why she chose to go with them, and it's possible that she may be permitted to return to us."

As much as I wanted to believe that what Carlisle and Esme suggested could be true, I was certain that it was only wishful thinking. Aro had coveted Alice's gift since the day he met her, and if he had found a way to convince her to stay with them, he would not give her up easily.

"You know we won't just leave her there," Edward said, speaking to Jasper who was staring, dumbfounded, at Carlisle and Esme. "But we have to stick together, and we have to have a plan. You know you wouldn't have stood a chance on your own."

Jasper growled. "We're wasting precious time. We can plan on our way there."

"Do you think they'll wait for us to go to them?" Tanya questioned. "Isn't it just as likely that they'll come here to finish us off, now that they can use Alice's abilities against us?"

"I don't know, and I don't plan on waiting around to find out," Jasper said emphatically. "We have to go look for her."

"I agree," said Eli. "I think we should go there. Even if they do have plans to come here, I don't think they would come very soon. They would probably want to wait long enough to catch us off guard."

Edward nodded. "If they do come back, I believe they'll continue to try to pick us off one or two at a time. They have the ability to surprise us now, and you can be certain that Aro will use Alice's visions to his full advantage. There's no way we could stay prepared – we can't all remain together twenty-four hours a day, indefinitely. We'll have to confront them instead."

A feeling of panic was beginning to build up inside of me. Even though I'd been expecting that we would have to pay a visit to the Volturi to find Alice, hearing Edward say it made it seem so much more real. It sounded as though we could be leaving for Volterra immediately, and such a trip was unlikely to be without casualties. I glanced at Renesmee, who was standing with Jacob next to Esme and Carlisle, and the feeling of panic increased. She would insist on going with us, and that thought was almost more than I could bear. And while I knew that they were right – that we had no choice other than to go after Alice – the note Alice had left was telling us not to. What if she really didn't want us to follow?

Carlisle was looking at Edward purposefully, apparently asking him a silent question, but Edward just shook his head briefly, his lips pressed into a thin line. He then glanced down at me. He rubbed my arm and tried to offer me a comforting smile, but all I could see was my own pain reflected back in his eyes.

"What about Alice's note?" I asked. "She must have seen something if she told us not to follow. She said that's what they wanted. You don't think we'll be walking into a trap?"

"I'm sure that's exactly what we're doing," he answered grimly. "But regardless of what Alice has seen, the future is not set in stone. There has to be a way to help her."

"They may have the upper hand at the moment, but we can change that," Jasper said. "We have to."

"What if Alice really didn't want us to follow?" Esme asked. "You know I want her back as much as any of you, but I just wonder if we should try to have more trust in her instructions."

"She had to have known that we would go after her anyway," Emmett said. "She wouldn't even need to be psychic to know that."

Emmett had a point. Alice probably left the note because she didn't want us risking ourselves for her, but she had to have known that we wouldn't just let her stay with them. Maybe she had seen that leaving the note would cause us to discuss things just long enough to prevent our arrival at an especially inopportune moment. Perhaps she had left it just to let us know they are expecting us. Or maybe she left it because she had received instructions to do so. There was no way to know what she was thinking, but it didn't matter - we had to go look for her.

"Both packs are already on their way here," said Jacob. "You just say the word, and we'll storm that castle!"

"We'll go, but we're not going there to launch an attack," Carlisle said firmly. "We'll only defend ourselves if forced to do so. We can locate Alice, make sure she's not harmed, and find out what's going on."

"Have you contacted any of our other friends, besides the Denalis?" Edward asked.

"Not yet, but it would certainly be helpful to have witnesses with us again," he answered, looking thoughtful. "I wouldn't ask any of our friends to fight, if it comes to that, and I hate to put any of them in a potentially dangerous situation. But the Volturi do value their reputation, and having witnesses there just might be enough to make them adhere to their own rules."

"I don't understand why they would do something like this – intentionally trying to start a conflict - when they've been taking such great pains to get on our good side," Tanya said. "Didn't you say, Edward, that Aro seemed sincere in his desire to repair relations with us? And he sent Chelsea to visit us for the same reason!"

"Aro did seem very intent on avoiding conflict when he was here," Edward agreed. "I'm not sure what has changed that would have caused him to initiate it."

"He could have been focusing on those thoughts intentionally in order to mislead you, so that they could gain the element of surprise," Jasper said. "And that's why they sent Chelsea as well. They wanted us to let our guard down."

"Caius was more eager for conflict," Edward said. "And the only reason Aro didn't physically attack us ten years ago was because he wasn't prepared for the possibility of having casualties on his side. He wasn't willing to risk his own life, or that of his mate. And as Carlisle just said, he's greatly concerned with appearances. If he could make it look like _we_ were attacking _them_ – if he could make it look like we were a large, power-hungry coven who wanted to overthrow them, and if he could ensure his own safety as well as that of the other leaders and the two wives, then I could see them forcing our hand. I really had the impression that Aro's plan was more long-term; he seemed so determined to get in our good graces. It must have taken some convincing to get Aro to go along with this idea. But regardless of any reservations Aro might have, I'm very doubtful that Caius will let us go without a fight this time around. Anyone who accompanies us should be appropriately warned."

"Absolutely," Carlisle agreed.

"Eleazar, Carmen, Kate, and Garrett are on their way," Tanya said. "They'll be here in the morning. We fully understand the dangers and are prepared to fight with you if it comes to that. Personally, I think the Volturi have ruled long enough."

"Sam and the others will be here in about three hours," Jake said. "Should I just have them meet us at the airport? We'll be leaving out of Boston, right?"

"I'll work on those arrangements," Edward answered. "It would be best if we could get everyone on one plane. I think it's unlikely that they'd launch an attack in the air, but if we're all together, Bella could shield us if necessary."

"What if they shoot the plane down?" Jake asked.

"Unlikely," Edward answered with a short laugh. "Not their style. We'd all be fine anyway. Even you wolves would be okay landing in the water, and they wouldn't do anything to cause us crash over Europe because of the risk of exposure."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Jacob agreed.

We then dispersed into smaller groups. Edward started working on plane reservations on his computer, and some of the others began making phone calls. I sat next to Edward and watched numbly as he hacked into the airline computer systems, rescheduled flight times, shuffled human passengers onto alternate flights, and made reservations for us under assumed names. I ran my fingers lightly through his hair as I worried about what the next several hours would bring.

"Nessie's going with us, isn't she?" I said when he had finished the flight arrangements. It was more of a statement than a question, since I already knew the answer.

"We can't make her stay here," he responded. "She's determined to go. And as she has been telling me, she'll be safer with us than if we left her here alone."

He put the computer down so he could wrap his arms around me, and I just leaned on his shoulder and closed my eyes for a while. I knew he was right, but it didn't make it any easier.

"I called Mishna," Renesmee said, coming up behind us a few minutes later. "She and Launhe have gone to track down Zafrina's coven. When she finds them, they'll be swimming the Atlantic, and they'll meet up with us in Italy."

"Eli, were you able to get in touch with Cora?" I heard Carlisle ask.

"I tried, but a human answered," he said. "She must have lost the phone or threw it away."

I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and realized how much I had been counting on Cora's help. Her expert fighting skills could have made a difference if we had to physically fight the Volturi.

"Do you know if she ever got in touch with Jesse or Fernando?" Edward asked.

"I haven't heard from her since she left," Eli said, shaking his head.

"I left Siobhan a voice message, but she hasn't called back yet," Carlisle said. "I think she and Liam and Maggie will stand with us again if we can manage to contact them."

"What about Peter and Charlotte?" Rosalie asked.

"They don't carry phones," Jasper answered. "And I'm not sure they'd be willing to help again anyway. I'm not going to take time to try to track them down."

"What about the other nomads, Mary and Randall?" I asked.

"There's no time to get in touch with them either," Jasper said. "They have no special talents, and I'm not sure if they would be willing to help us anyway."

I began feeling even more discouraged; we would be outnumbered even worse than before.

"Jasper's strategy is to get there as quickly as possible and with more witnesses than they would expect us to be able to gather on such short notice," Edward murmured in my ear. "He doesn't think a few extra nomads will make much difference, and I tend to agree. But anything we can do that they are not expecting will be to our advantage."

"Charles and Makenna?" I asked as I continued through my mental list of all the vampires we knew.

Edward shook his head. "We can ask them if we happen to run across them on our way to Italy, but it's unlikely they'd be willing to help anyway. You remember how quickly they left when it began to look like there would be a fight."

"We're not flying directly into Italy?" I asked. Apparently I hadn't been paying as much attention as I thought I had to what he had been doing on the computer.

"Egypt," he said simply.

"Benjamin and Tia?" I asked, a small smile breaking through despite the level of anxiety I felt.

He nodded. "I'm hoping we can find them quickly. Jasper's not too happy about the detour."

"Benjamin had asked me to contact him if we were ever threatened by the Volturi again," Carlisle explained, walking over and sitting down across from us. "I didn't make him any promises, but it won't take much time to stop by there. Even if he chooses not to join us, I'd like their coven to be aware of what's going on. Benjamin's talent is very unique, and we know Aro is interested in acquiring him as well."

I hoped we would be able to find them. Amun and Kebi probably wouldn't join us, but I had a feeling that we would need as much help as we could get, and I knew we could count on Benjamin and Tia.

I continued through my mental list. Alistair had made his position clear; though he would wish Carlisle well, he would not be present for any confrontation with the Volturi. Stefan and Vladimir? They would certainly be interested if we were planning an attack, but I doubted they would be much help with a rescue, which was what we were hoping for. Besides, they just made me uncomfortable.

So that accounted for everyone. I just hoped Siobhan would return Carlisle's call; as it stood, it could end up just being us, the Delanis, and the wolves. There was no way to know how long it would take Nahuel's sisters to find Zafrina's coven, and I wasn't sure if Jasper would be willing to wait for the Brazilians to show up. And it was possible we could have trouble finding them even if they managed to beat us there.

* * *

It was nearly twenty-four hours later when we arrived at Benjamin's doorstep. We had flown into Luxor, Egypt, that morning, but had to wait until nightfall before leaving the city due to the unrelenting sunlight.

Jasper had only agreed to the side trip to Egypt in the first place because the weather forecast had predicted rain there, whereas Italy was expected to be sunny. We had been expecting to be able to keep moving the whole time, so that we would arrive in Volterra only an hour or so later than if our flight had landed in Italy since the sun would have delayed us there anyway. But unfortunately, human weather predictions were not always as accurate as Alice. Confronted with this change of plans, Jasper had suggested getting vehicles with tinted windows so we could start driving toward Italy, but Edward had pointed out that we would be lucky to make it as far as Cairo before nightfall if we were traveling by car, and on foot it wouldn't take much longer to get to Italy from Amun's territory near Luxor than it would take if we were leaving from Cairo at nightfall.

For a while, I worried that Jasper might take off alone to get a head start in finding Alice, but ultimately he realized that would not be a good strategy – he needed the whole group if he were going to have a chance at negotiating with the Volturi. So we had waited in the airport with a very impatient Jasper until we could safely travel west across the Egyptian terrain that no rental car would have been able to cross.

I was beginning to feel a little strain from having shielded the fourteen of us throughout the entire journey from the time we left Carlisle's house. And I would have to maintain my shield until our mission was complete, for Jasper had pointed out that Demetri would be able to sense our approach. He was probably attempting to feel out our location, considering that Alice had said they wanted us to follow her.

Benjamin, Tia, Amun, and Kebi lived beneath the ruins of an ancient, abandoned temple several miles west of Luxor. Carlisle had pointed out the more impressive temple in the city which had originally been built for the worship of Amun, back in the days before the Volturi had created the rule prohibiting exposure to humans. I had not realized previously that Amun was centuries older than even the Volturi rulers or the Romanians.

Carlisle further explained that their coven had been forced to move to another location briefly, several decades earlier, when their current temple was being excavated. All objects of human interest had been removed and transferred to museums or private collections. What remained was of little interest to humans, in comparison to the more spectacular ruins which had become tourist attractions, and they had moved back in once it was clear that humanity had all but forgotten about the site.

As expected, Amun was not happy to see us, especially when we explained the reason for our visit. He didn't particularly appreciate having the wolves around, either. He pleaded with Benjamin not to leave with us, but it was to no avail.

We made our way through Egypt and Libya on foot, as planned. We ran non-stop through the cover of night and avoided populated areas, travelling mostly through the desert. It was nearly sunrise when we arrived in Tunisia.

We all stopped for a moment to consider our options. Jasper checked the current Italian weather forecast on his phone, and I knew the news wasn't good when he crushed the device and hurled the remains away in frustration.

"We could swim," Eleazar suggested. "We should be able to make it to the coast before the sun becomes a problem."

"And when we arrive in Italy?" Jasper prompted.

Eleazar just shrugged, looking defeated.

"I think Benjamin may be able to help us," Edward said, eyeing the young man.

Benjamin's mouth turned up in a grin.

"Can you conjure up some clouds?" Carlisle asked, catching on just as I was beginning to form the same thought.

"I've only recently started playing with the weather," he said. "Amun doesn't even know. But it shouldn't be too hard to create some cloud cover."

Immediately, the wind picked up, and within a few minutes I could see some clouds forming above us.

We made our way to the coast and crossed the Mediterranean by boat with a group of tourists. I wondered if any of the human passengers noticed that the clouds were following the boat, but I didn't hear any comments.

As we ran through southern Italy toward Volterra, we crossed the path of some familiar scents – Zafrina, Kachiri, Senna, and Nahuel's three sisters. I felt a small measure of relief that they had made it in time and that we had found them so easily. And yet at the same time, I felt a stab of guilt, knowing that even six extra vampires on our side might not be enough. Had we invited them to accompany us on a one-way trip? I tried not to think of it as we followed their scent to a thickly wooded area where they had gone to find cover from the sun.

Renesmee and Zafrina were especially excited to see one another again. I knew that the special bond the two of them had formed was the reason Zafrina and her coven were willing to join us. Zafrina recognized Renesmee immediately but still expressed amazement at how much she had changed in ten years. Nahuel's sisters clustered around Renesmee as well, since they knew her better than any of the rest of us. They had their own reasons for assisting us – they wanted to be present for any chance to help defeat the Volturi, in revenge for what had been done to their father.

I wished Renesmee could have spent more time catching up with them, but there was no time for visiting. So our enlarged group continued on, sticking to wooded areas as much as possible so that we could run without our speed being noticed by humans.

When we were within a few miles of Volterra, we stopped to discuss strategy. Eli wanted to go on ahead alone to see what information he could gather; he argued that Demetri had not met him and therefore would not be able to detect his location. He wanted to go close enough to the castle to scan the people inside and try to confirm that Alice was there. Jasper quickly nixed that idea, arguing that Alice might be able to see him approach once he was travelling unaccompanied by the wolves. And what Alice would see, Aro would see. And Tanya insisted that she didn't want him wandering about Volterra alone and unshielded.

We also discussed how we could approach the castle without being spotted by any members of the guard. Ideally, we wanted them to have as little warning as possible that we were coming. The less prepared they were, the better our chances would be if we had to fight. We also discussed how we would try to find Alice and whether we might attempt to retrieve her without even talking the Volturi if we could manage to avoid them. But of course, we all knew that avoiding them would not be possible.

"I really think we should just march in the front door and ask for an audience with the leaders," Jasper said. "It's too dangerous for us to split up, and they're going to see us coming if we stay together."

"I have a better idea," a familiar voice said, startling me since I hadn't realized anyone was behind me.

I whirled around, as did most everyone our group, and I was shocked to see Cora standing there with two male vampires I hadn't met before. Then, before I could respond, Siobhan, Liam, and Maggie appeared next to them.

"Cora!" Eli exclaimed, a huge smile spreading across his face.

"I've never seen you so glad to see me," she said, chuckling. She put her arm around him with a look of pride and turned to the Irish coven members who had arrived with her. "This is Eli."

"Have you joined the Denali coven?" Maggie asked Eli, looking confusedly at his fingers which were still entwined with Tanya's.

"Yes, I'm Tanya's mate," he answered, stepping gracefully away from Cora's partial embrace.

Cora looked stunned, but quickly recovered her composure and congratulated them.

"Sorry I hadn't been able to tell you earlier," Eli said. "I met Tanya a couple of weeks after your last visit, and, well, you seem to have lost the phone we gave you."

"Yes," she said, smiling ruefully. "You know how it is. When you're hunting, you lose focus on other things. I didn't even think about it until several hours after I'd acquired my new outfit, and when I returned for the device, it was gone. I did find a replacement, but of course you didn't have the new number."

"So how did you find us?" Jasper asked Cora, interrupting the little reunion for which he obviously had little patience. I thought I could detect some suspicion in his voice.

"I have a tendency to show up at the right place at the right time," Fernando answered with a cocky grin, before Cora could respond. "And if you're wanting to get into the Volturi compound undetected, we may be able to help you."

"I'm listening," Jasper said.

"There are tunnels," Cora said. "I'm not even sure how I know that, because no one ever told me, but there are tunnels that lead into the castle."

"We're already aware of the tunnels," Carlisle said, dismissing the information with a kind smile. "There are several drainage holes within the city that all lead to the reception area, and then there are two outside the city which merge and lead directly to the throne room. And you can be certain that they're being guarded more heavily than normal since they're expecting us."

"No, there are more," Jesse insisted. "The ones leading into other parts of the compound have been sealed off and haven't been used for centuries, but I think we can find them."

"Amazing," Edward said. "All three of you are visualizing the same tunnel entrances, and not one of you knows how you acquired that information."

"I think you may have been right about the one who created us removing our memories," Cora said. "I think we may have had more training than we remember, but somehow we retained the knowledge gained during training sessions that have been erased from our minds."

"Cora, Fernando, and Jesse were created by the same vampire who created Alice," Edward explained to our Irish, Brazilian, and Egyptian allies, who were looking rather confused. "It seems he had the ability to selectively erase memories."

"Was he part of the Volturi?" Benjamin asked. "And is he still around? That's a pretty impressive talent."

"He was killed by a nomad while Alice was undergoing her transformation," Cora answered. "And we were taught to avoid the Volturi, so I don't think he was part of them, although I suppose he could have been a former member who had turned against them."

"So what made you decide to come find us? Do you know anything about what the Volturi are planning?" Jasper asked Cora.

"We weren't looking for _you_," Fernando said with a condescending smile. "I had decided I wanted to find those tunnel entrances, just to see if they exist."

"I found Fernando several days after I met with you," Cora explained. "Or I suppose it would be more accurate to say that he found me, even though I was looking for him. In any case, I passed along the information you had shared with me, and he became more curious about the Volturi. We found Jesse and convinced him to come with us, and then when we stopped in Ireland to hunt, we encountered Maggie. I suspected she was the same Maggie that Eli had mentioned, and when I asked her if she knew Carlisle , she told us about the message she had just received."

"We were headed the same direction, so we decided to travel together," Siobhan added.

"And I'd like to offer you my assistance in recovering Alice," Cora said.

"We're not launching an attack," Carlisle cautioned. "We hope to resolve this conflict without violence."

"But you will defend yourselves if necessary," Cora said with a slight smile. "I understand, and I will follow your lead. After all, you know our opponents much better than I do."

"We are grateful your support," Carlisle said.

"Well, I'm ready to go find the tunnels," Fernando said. "Who's coming with me?"

"Give us a moment," Edward told him as several people began talking at once, discussing the possible advantages and disadvantages of using such tunnels.

"I don't want to lose time searching for tunnels, and we have no real guarantee that they will be empty or that they will end inside the castle," Jasper said, sounding unsure.

"If Fernando doesn't lead us straight to the entrance, we can just continue on as you planned before," Cora suggested.

"It would give us the advantage of surprise without needing to split up," Jasper said, obviously warming to the idea. "They wouldn't see us coming at all."

"I don't think we want to give them quite that much of a surprise, Jasper," Carlisle said. "They would perceive it as an attack."

"Even if they _know_ it's not an attack, it would still look like one, and that would probably be all the justification they would need," Edward added.

"You're both right," Jasper said with a sigh. "It's too risky."

"So it's just Jesse and me, then?" Fernando asked.

Jasper suddenly looked alarmed. "You're still planning to take the tunnels?"

"That _is_ the reason we came here," Fernando answered with a shrug. "What's the problem?"

"Alice may see you approaching. The only reason she can't see us now is because of the wolves. She can't see them, and she can't see us when we're with them. If she sees you, the Volturi will know exactly where to find you, and you won't stand a chance."

Fernando seemed to consider that for a moment. "Cora had mentioned that, about the wolves," he said. "But if we're planning to rendezvous with your group once we get there, she won't be able to see me, right?"

"You're willing to stand with us?" Carlisle asked, surprised.

"I'll give you fair warning that we may change our minds if it seems in our best interest," he replied. "But I'll stand with you if it will help rescue Alice. I'd like to meet my 'sister.' And I will fight with you if I don't change my mind before the time comes. I have a tendency to make split-second decisions, and I've learned to just go with my instincts – they haven't failed me yet."

"The same goes for me," Jesse said. "I'd love to help you, but we'll do what Fernando deems best when we get there."

"If you get to Alice first…," Jasper began.

"We'll take her back through the tunnel if we can do so undetected," Fernando said.

"I think I should go with them," Eli said.

"I think that's a good idea," said Edward. "That way, I could hear what's going on in the tunnel, as long we're all in the general proximity of the castle. I'll be able to hear you from a greater distance than Fernando or Jesse since your mind is more familiar to me."

I could see the alarm in Tanya's eyes. She couldn't go with him without risking detection by Demetri, and of course she wouldn't want to be separated from him. But she didn't object.

I couldn't watch their goodbye kiss. Just the way they looked at each other made me think about how I would feel if it were Edward separating from our group.

"So what does the tunnel entrance look like?" I asked Edward, solely as a way to distract myself from my thoughts.

"They were all imagining uprooting a large tree and jumping down into the resulting hole," he said. "I had the impression none of them had actually seen it before, since they were all visualizing it differently, but it was obviously the same entrance they were all thinking of. I think it must have been described verbally to them and they each formed their own mental picture."

And then Eli, Fernando, and Jesse were gone, headed deeper into the woods in search of the tree that marked the tunnel entrance.

"Are we ready?" Carlisle asked those of us who remained.

"What are we going to do when we get to the city?" Jacob asked. "Don't you think we'll look a bit out of place? No offense, but you guys look like an army of freaks with your pale skin and inhuman eyes. And my people are all obviously a group too. Won't the locals think it's a little strange to see two large groups of foreigners marching into their city? We can't scatter too much, or Bella won't be able to shield us all."

"We can act like tourists again," Edward said.

"You're serious?" Jacob said.

"And we're not going to march," Edward added with a smirk.

Jacob rolled his eyes, and just then Carlisle gave the word for us to continue on our journey.

Whenever our path crossed a human road, we would all stop and wait, out of sight from anyone who might be on the road, until Edward would give the all clear.

It was at one of these crossings near the town of Pomerance that instead of Edward indicating we could cross, he told us that he thought we needed to take a small detour.

"What is it, Edward?" Carlisle asked.

"If we're going to be tourists, we need some props," he answered.

Carlisle nodded. "Do you have something specific in mind?"

"Yes. I've already made arrangements for us to pick up some things nearby," Edward said.

"We don't need another delay," Jasper objected, his patience obviously wearing thin.

Carlisle motioned the two of them closer to him, and they apparently discussed the pros and cons of Edward's idea.

"We've decided to go with Edward's plan," Jasper announced, motioning for us to start moving again. "It should save us some time after all."

We all followed Edward, keeping the road in view as we moved through the woods alongside it. Soon, we came to a stop behind a large building.

"Bella, can you keep me shielded while I go around front?" Edward asked.

"Sure," I said. I had been shielding everyone for so long by that point that it probably would have taken more thought and effort for me to unshield him. I could feel that portion of my shield stretching as he walked around to the front of the building and then slowed to human speed as he turned the corner and disappeared from view.

I heard him speaking in Italian with a human who was inside the building, and then he walked back out. I expected him to continue retracing his steps and return to us, but instead he walked even further away, and I wondered how much further my shield would be able to stretch. I should have asked him how far he was going before telling him I could keep him shielded. Just as I was about to become truly concerned, Carlisle's phone rang and it was Edward. Of course, we could have heard him from that distance without the phone, but he was keeping up the charade in front of the humans.

"Can you meet us at the gas station a mile down the road?" he asked.

"We'll be there," Carlisle answered.

"Is it okay if I set the pace?" I asked. "I'm not sure how much further I can stretch this shield."

"Of course," Carlisle said, gesturing for me to take the lead.

"What's going on?" Emmett asked.

"He's rented a tour bus to get us into the heart of the city," Jasper explained. "We will be able to travel more quickly within Volterra than if we had to limit ourselves to human speed on foot."

There was some murmuring among the group, some of whom seem impressed by the idea, and others who seemed apprehensive.

As soon as Edward began moving again, I matched his speed as he moved along the road. He was traveling on the road itself, and we moved alongside him, hidden by the trees. When he stopped, we began moving closer to the road and when we came to the edge of the woods, we could see the back of a gas station.

"He has a human driver," Carlisle said. "I'm going to go inside and buy some sunglasses and snacks."

He returned quickly and distributed the nine pairs of cheap sunglasses to our non-vegetarian allies. He also handed some oversized jackets to the Amazonians, long enough to cover their attire which was not only conspicuously non-European but would also have stood out due to being inappropriate for the cool weather. They still had no shoes, but if they stayed behind the rest of us, the driver might not notice. He also handed out snacks to the Quileutes, whose stomachs had all been growling for the last several hours.

"Is the human driver a problem for anyone?" Carlisle asked.

"I think I can control myself," said Cora, seeming a bit offended.

"We sated ourselves on the way here," Maggie answered.

"We're fine," Benjamin answered for himself and Tia.

"We will do as you wish," Zafrina said, though she seemed a little uncomfortable as she eyed the bus. I wondered if she had ever used human transportation before.

"My people will sit in the front, just in case," Sam said firmly.

"That's actually a good idea," Rosalie said. "I think the smell of wet dog would kill anyone's appetite."

"We appreciate your precautions," Carlisle said sincerely.

We waited until Edward had the driver engaged in conversation so that he wasn't looking our way, and then we filed into the parking lot. It would be less suspicious if the driver could assume we had come out of the gas station rather than him seeing us come from the woods behind it.

As planned, the wolves sat in front, and the rest of us sat in the back except for Renesmee who sat with Jake. We filled over half of the seats in the bus. With all that was on our minds, we were much quieter than a similarly sized group of humans probably would have been, but the driver was wearing earbuds, listening to music, and did not seem to notice what an unusual group he had been assigned to drive around.

The bus eased out onto the highway, and in less than thirty minutes I saw the familiar walls of Volterra looming ahead. The road was not congested as it had been the day I had traveled there as a human; apparently it was not a festival day. The man at the security station barely glanced up as the tour bus rumbled through the gate.

We went right through the heart of the city, and soon the clock tower loomed in the distance. It was nearly midday, and though the sunlight reflected brightly from the clock, I knew it would be shaded by Benjamin's clouds before we would arrive there.

"I can hear her," Edward said quietly.

"Is she okay?" Jasper demanded, his eyes desperate. "Can you see where she is?"

"She's frantic that she can't see you, or any of us, but especially you," he answered. "She's beside herself that something might happen to you. It seems that the wolves have successfully blinded her psychic ability. But she can't see physically, either. When I look through her eyes, I see nothing. And she can't hear. I don't think she knows where she is."

"Alec must still be with her," Jasper said. "If they've hurt her…," his voice dissolved into a growl.

"Yes, it's Alec. He's watching her. She's just standing there, unmoving. "

"Can you hear Eli?" I asked, wondering if he had made it here through the secret tunnel system.

Edward just shook his head, and I felt my hopes sink a little further.

The bus stopped at a building that was not far from the clock tower. Edward went to the front of the bus and had another conversation with the driver. The man seemed confused and seemed to be trying to persuade him of something until Edward handed him some cash. The man's eyes grew large, and he quietly sat back in his seat and waited while Edward motioned for us to get off. When the last of us had exited, the bus left.

With Carlisle leading the way, we slipped between two buildings. I didn't think we looked much like tourists. Fortunately, there weren't many people around at that moment, and once we had slipped between the two buildings, we were out of sight of the few people who were milling around in the plaza. I recognized the storm drain up ahead as the one I had gone down with Edward and Alice on my previous trip. However, there was one lone human man sitting on a bench along our narrow street. We would need to do something to distract him or make him leave.

The man glanced up from his newspaper and briefly scanned our group, and then returned his focus to his paper. He didn't seem overly concerned about us, but it wouldn't do to have him see us all jumping down a storm drain.

Carlisle looked at Zafrina and tilted his head slightly toward the drain. "That's the entrance. Can you make this man think we went back the way we came?"

"I've got it," said Zafrina. "He won't see anything unusual."

Carlisle went over to the drain and removed the iron grill that covered it.

"What happened to using the front door?" Jake muttered as he peered down into the hole.

"This _is_ the front door," Edward told him. "The door to the clock tower building just goes into a room with tourism information. The receptionist there has no idea what goes on in the rest of the building."

Once we had all descended into the corridor, Carlisle replaced the iron grate and we passed quickly through the damp passageway. It was no more inviting than it had seemed to me when I was human. Soon we arrived in the lobby, where a human receptionist was busily typing on a computer at her station. I was surprised that no guard members had been sent yet to greet us or escort us in – or to start a war before we could even present our case.

I glanced around the reception area, my gaze lingering on the chairs where Edward, Alice, and I had once waited for permission to exit the building. In some ways, it seemed so long ago. My eyes moved to the elevator doors, and it suddenly hit me that there was no way our entire group was going to fit into that elevator at the same time. Even if we could physically cram ourselves into it, it was extremely unlikely that the machinery could handle lifting such a heavy load.

"May I help you?" the receptionist asked. She sounded every bit as professional as Giana, but her eyes gave away her surprise as the rest of Quileutes filed into the reception area and she took in the size of our group.

"I believe your employers are expecting us," Edward told her.

"Oh," she said, resuming her professional expression. "Well, I don't have any appointments scheduled for this afternoon, but I can check for you. Your name, sir?"

"Cullen."

The lady, whose nametag read "Ariana," picked up her phone and announced, "Cullen, party of forty-one, here to see you. Should I send them up?"

"Only twenty-five of us wish to go up," Edward quickly corrected her. "Our Quileute friends will wait here in the lobby."

This was news to me. I wondered if Edward had heard that plan in Carlisle's or Jasper's mind, or if he'd simply come to the same conclusion I had - that we couldn't all fit on the elevator. The idea of them waiting behind worried me because we would need them with us if this came to a fight, but I could see how leading two packs of wolves into the throne room could be interpreted as an act of aggression.

The woman did not repeat Edward's correction into the phone, but I knew that the ones on the other end of the line would have heard.

"We'll call for them momentarily," said the voice on the phone.

"They'll call for you momentarily," Ariana echoed as she hung up the phone. "Please make yourselves comfortable. I'm sorry we don't have enough chairs; we don't usually get groups this large."

I imagined not.

Ariana resumed typing as if the bizarre group assembled in her reception area were of no consequence.

Jake and Sam went over to the chairs and sat down, and the other wolves followed. They all looked incredibly tired. Some of the younger ones who didn't have chairs stretched out in the floor. I wondered if any of them would actually be able to fall asleep under these circumstances.

"What's going on?" Jasper hissed at Edward.

"Aro isn't here," Edward whispered. "But Caius is expecting him to arrive at any time."

"So they want us to wait here until Aro returns?" Carlisle asked.

Edward nodded. "And Caius hasn't told Aro about Alice. He thinks Aro will be pleasantly surprised when he sees that she's been acquired, but I think he may have acted alone in planning it."

"Are you sure?" asked Carlisle. "Could the surprise be in how quickly he was able to bring her here? Aro _had_ to have been in on the plan. They _never_ act alone."

"Possibly," Edward said. "But he's also anticipating Aro's surprise at all of us being here. He hadn't thought we'd beat Aro here."

"But he knew we'd come," Jasper said.

Edward nodded again. "He sees it as a win-win scenario – either they gain Alice and possibly some other talents, or they take care of us once and for all."

"What's the idea with having my people stay here?" Sam asked. "You don't really expect us to let you go up there alone, do you?"

"Yes, we do," Carlisle told him. "If we are to have any hope of negotiating with them, we can't bring you with us. They would see it as an outright attack, and we wouldn't have a chance to speak."

"How are we supposed to know if you need our help?" Jacob asked. "They must have some serious soundproofing in this place; I can't hear anyone outside this room."

"We'll call for you if we need you," Edward said.

"With your phone?" Jacob asked incredulously.

"Of course," Edward said.

"What if you don't have time?" Sam asked. "I don't want to just wait here. What if I take my people to that other entrance you mentioned - the tunnel that leads directly to the throne room? We could wait in that tunnel, and enter only if you need us."

"Too dangerous," Carlisle said. "Aro will be entering through that tunnel, and he won't be alone. Bella can't shield you from that distance."

"But if Sam and Jacob stay here, they'll all still be shielded," said Jasper. "Right, Bella?"

"Yes, but only if they're all in wolf form," I said. "It only works when their minds are linked."

Neither Sam nor Jacob looked pleased with the idea of sending their packs on such a dangerous mission while they stayed behind, but they seemed to be considering it.

"Would my people go back out the same way we came in?" Jacob asked. "That storm drain is too narrow for us when we're in wolf form. And what if someone on the street sees them?"

"The path is clear at the moment," Edward said. "Caius is gathering all of the guard members in the throne room in preparation for what he hopes will be a fight. And there's no one on that street right now. Bella, can you shield them until they get out of the building?"

"Yes," I said.

Sam and Jake nodded their assent to their packs.

Ariana glanced up as the fourteen young men left the lobby, but she didn't say anything.

"Do you want me to keep the human entertained so that she won't be frightened by the wolves?" Zafrina asked.

"I think she could use a healthy dose of fear," Edward said, looking at the woman with disdain.

"Um, we'll just go out into the corridor to phase," Jake said.

He and Sam strolled out just as the others had, but a few seconds later they returned in wolf form.

Ariana had barely glanced up as they left, but when the two horse-sized wolves walked in, she lost all semblance of composure. She jumped up from her chair and backed against the wall, and it sounded as through her heart might beat right out of her chest.

"Jasper, help the poor woman," Esme ordered.

"It's okay, they're friendly," Jasper said, taking a couple of steps toward Ariana.

She appeared unconvinced, but I could hear her heart rate slow, and I knew Jasper was working his magic. After a moment, she took her seat again, but she continued staring at the wolves as they lay down between the two rows of chairs and Jake rested his head in Renesmee's lap. Finally, she shook her head as if to clear it and went back to her typing.

"How's Alice doing?" Jasper asked Edward.

"No change," he said. "But Aro has arrived. He just got the full report from Caius, and he is most definitely surprised. Caius acted on his own. Aro doesn't seem as pleased as Caius had anticipated. He's angry that Caius didn't consult him, and he's upset that his own long-term plan to win us over has almost no chance of success now. He's considering different ways he could respond to try to work the situation to meet his agenda."

"Was there anything in Caius's report about how they got Alice to go meet them?" Jasper asked. "They threatened me, didn't they?"

"Alec and Jerome had orders to kill you if she didn't go with them," Edward said.

"Jerome?" Jasper asked. "Is he a new guard member? The scent we didn't recognize?"

Edward nodded. "Yes. They've added several new guard members in the last few years. And we're about to meet them - they're sending Felix for us now. Caius is hoping for a fight; Aro is still undecided."

Edward's phone rang and he pulled it out to answer it. I recognized the number displayed on the screen as being Seth's, but the elevator doors began to open just then. Edward silenced the phone and slipped it back into his pocket without answering it. I wondered why Seth was calling. Had they run into trouble already? I glanced over at Jake and Sam, but they appeared unconcerned.

Just inside the open elevator doors, Felix stood there smiling at us, his eyes an odd shade of orange. He must have "slipped" recently.

"Welcome to Volterra," he said, stepping out and motioning for us to enter the elevator.

* * *

**A/N: **

**I edited a few paragraphs in Chapter 31 ("Denali") today to change the part about Corin so that it does not contradict what was said about her in The Official Illustrated Guide. I changed it because I had her gender wrong (I think I had read a fanfic or two where Corin was male and that must have influenced me), and I liked her "real" gift better than the one I had made up, and it was easy to fix since it was only about four lines. But I don't currently plan to go back and make any other changes to force things match the "Guide."**

**I changed my setting a few months ago to allow anonymous reviews, and while I love the extra feedback, I can't reply to those because there's no reply link in the email I receive. So if you'd like a reply, just make sure you're signed in when you review. :)**


	35. Negotiation

Chapter 35 – Negotiation

Somehow we all fit into the elevator. Edward directed Renesmee and me to the center, keeping himself and several others between us and the controls where Felix would be standing.

Felix stepped over to Ariana's desk with an amused expression on his face and asked, "You don't mind the dogs waiting in here, do you?"

Ariana glanced over at Sam and Jake, who were stretched out on the floor in rather non-threatening positions. She shrugged, obviously trying to appear unaffected by their presence, and said, "They seem harmless enough."

Felix chuckled. The woman's fear was palpable; I could still smell it all the way from the elevator.

"Where are the rest of them?" he asked her.

"There were just the two," she said, looking confused. "I haven't seen any others."

"I mean the sixteen who were supposed to wait here," he said.

"Oh. The human men all left right before the two dogs showed up," she said, beginning to look nervous. "Should I have tried to keep them here?"

Felix ignored her and walked back into the elevator with a slight frown. She was still watching us nervously as the doors closed.

"They weren't happy that we decided to leave them in the lobby," Edward offered. "Most of them went back to their hotel."

Felix raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

As we began to ascend, Edward whispered in my ear, "Can you shield Alice?"

I nodded slightly and threw my shield up and out over a wide area. Once I had located Alice's familiar point of light, I tightened the shield around her and drew the rest back in to our group on the elevator. I could also still feel Jake and Sam down below. They had not moved from their previous position.

I assumed that Aro had been about to touch Alice to access her vision of the future, and I enjoyed trying to imagine Aro's reaction when he discovered he couldn't hear her. He would realize that I was shielding her, of course, and I couldn't help smiling at his disappointment.

All too soon, the elevator doors opened and we stepped into the short corridor that led to the throne room, and without delay we continued on through the entryway to face the self-declared "royalty" upon whose response our fate would depend.

Edward had said that there were several new guard members, and that they were all gathering in preparation for our meeting, but I was not prepared for what I saw as I entered the room. The guard had more than doubled. Sixty guards wearing light gray cowls lined the walls, surrounding us, and that was not even counting the now-familiar elite guard members who stood close to their leaders. The three leaders themselves were seated casually on their thrones.

Alice stood next to Alec, and she was clothed in the dark gray attire of the elite. I knew she could physically see us, because I was shielding her from Alec, but her expression was unreadable.

"Welcome, my dear friends!" Aro exclaimed, standing and stretching his arms out dramatically. "What a pleasant surprise this is! I hadn't expected a visit so soon! Have more of you decided to join us, as Alice has? I must say, I was simply delighted by her decision! Edward? Bella?"

"I think you know why we're here, Aro," Carlisle said. "We came for Alice. Are you holding her captive, or is she free to return with us?"

Aro laughed heartily. "My dear Carlisle, the choice is hers, of course! She is free to leave at any time."

I knew better to believe him; but still, when Caius gave him a questioning glare, I felt a small bit of hope rise within me for a brief second before it was squelched by the low growl in Edward's throat.

"I'm staying here, Carlisle," Alice said firmly. "Jasper, _please_, just go home. Get everyone home. I need you to trust me that this is best for both of us right now – for all of us."

"I know Alice is going to be very happy here," Caius said.

"I do hope the rest of you will visit her often," Aro added. "There is no need for our families to be at odds with one another."

"Could I stay here with her?" Jasper asked, stepping forward.

"Of course," Aro replied, another smile slowly spreading across his face. "We would be honored to have you as our guest."

Alice was shaking her head. "I love you, Jasper, but we need some time apart. Please let me do this."

"We assure you, we will take good care of her," Caius said.

"And she's free to return to you whenever she decides to do so," Aro said.

Alice stood silently, her eyes pleading for us to leave. I wondered if the wolves were still interfering with her sight or if she was getting solid visions of what the future would be if we remained too long.

Suddenly, Aro's boisterous smile vanished, and he seemed almost as if he were in pain for a moment, but then I decided he looked more frustrated than anything else. He scanned the room as if looking for something. I glanced around as well, to see if I could determine what he was reacting to, but Zafrina and Jasper looked as confused as I felt – it was apparent that they weren't doing anything. I knew Edward must be hearing what was going on, but his careful expression gave nothing away.

Finally, Aro settled into a smile again, one that was even more calculating and diabolical than usual. It sent chills down my spine.

"My dear Edward," he said, taking a step closer to us. "You've been holding out on me."

"I didn't do anything," Edward said calmly. "But that _was_ an interesting memory you just shared with me. I wonder – have you ever shared that with anyone else?"

"You are still young, and your talent is only now beginning to reach its full potential," Aro said. He then assumed a more authoritative and persuasive tone. "You must see that your place is here, among the guard. All that I offered you before – and more - will be yours. And I'm sure Jasper would take comfort in knowing that you're here with Alice."

To my great horror and astonishment, Edward stepped forward and said meekly, "I accept your offer."

There was a subtle change to his posture – his shoulders were no longer squared back in defiance, and his head tilted slightly forward, showing deference to the Volturi leaders. His hands were clenched into tight fists, but he showed no other indication of whatever inner struggle was consuming him.

Aro's smile broadened.

Renesmee drew closer to me and gripped my arm, and I saw a brief replay of Edward stepping forward, along with our daughter's horror and dismay at how the situation was escalating. She couldn't understand how her father would ever submit to their demands. I wished I could reassure her, but her pain was only amplifying my own.

Carlisle glanced quickly around the room in confusion and then looked at Edward intently, studying his face for some clue as to what was going on or how he should respond.

"Bella, unshield me," I heard Edward say. The pain and apprehension in his voice left no doubt that he really intended for me to comply.

"What?" I asked. I had heard him perfectly, but I was stalling for time. I wasn't sure how Aro was manipulating him, but it infuriated me. A faint reddish glow formed around Aro and the rest of the Volturi as my feelings of worry were overtaken by rage. At that moment, there was nothing I would have enjoyed more than ripping the ancient leader to shreds. A hiss escaped my lips even as I reminded myself that I must maintain control; if our side initiated an attack, what little hope we had of a peaceful resolution would be gone.

"I need to show Aro my sincerity. Please, Bella, trust me," Edward said desperately. I hadn't seen such pain in his eyes since my pregnancy with Renesmee. I couldn't bear the thought of Aro taking Edward's memories – our memories – again. But he wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't the best option available. Would he? Against every instinct I had, I tried to pull the shield back from him, but it snapped back into place and seemed to cling to him even more tightly than before. My subconscious was rebelling against my efforts as much as if I were trying to leave my own mind exposed during battle.

"Bella, it's okay," Alice assured me. But then her face went blank for about two seconds, and when her vision was over she looked decidedly worried. I wondered if the outcome of this confrontation somehow hinged on my ability to let Aro hear Edward's thoughts.

"I'm trying," I said, still struggling with that portion of my shield. "But it's not cooperating."

"Carlisle, take them home now," Edward said. "Alice and I will be fine here. Make sure the wolves go home too – it's too dangerous for them to remain in this area."

Carlisle didn't seem ready to go anywhere. Jacob and Sam, on the other hand, were moving. The tendrils of my shield that were protecting the two wolves were stretching further and further. They seemed to be headed back toward the storm drain where we had entered. And then they reached the limits of my shield, and they were gone. I felt a new wave of panic as they disappeared – the wolves were all unshielded now. Had they heard Edward somehow? Were they really going home?

"Edward –," Carlisle began, but stopped at the sound of a loud but brief rumbling that seemed to come from the corridor to the elevator.

Then I heard a familiar voice at the back of the room.

"It's not Edward you want, anyway. It's me."

All eyes turned to Eli. I immediately extended my shield around him; at least the rest of it seemed to be working.

Eli had entered through the same corridor we had just come through from the elevator. I extended my shield out behind him, searching the corridor and elevator for Fernando and Jesse, but there was no one there.

I felt Edward's fingertips brush against my arm and realized he was standing right next to me again. I could tell he was still worried, but he no longer looked ready to accept defeat. I felt immense relief to have him at my side again, but I knew the confrontation was probably far from being over.

"And you are?" Caius demanded.

"Eli," he answered, but his eyes were on Aro.

Aro was looking rather uncomfortable again. It was beginning to make sense - Eli must have been pulling Aro's memories, and Aro had assumed Edward was responsible.

"He's a friend of the family," Carlisle added. "He's here to witness our negotiations regarding Alice, like the others who have accompanied us."

"So you want to kill Jasper and Bella, just like you did Didyme," Eli said to Aro. "Do you really think you can control Alice and Edward like you do Marcus? Not even Corin will be able to keep them content."

Marcus, who had been watching the scene unfold with his usual disinterest, suddenly seemed to wake up. He stood, looked Eli in the eye, and demanded, "What did you say?"

"An interesting tactic," Aro said with his typical jubilance. "He's trying to sow discord among the three of us."

Caius did not speak, but I had seen the shock that had briefly registered on his face at Eli's words.

"What do you know of Didyme?" Marcus demanded of Eli.

"The accusation is preposterous!" Caius exclaimed, his tone seeming to indicate that he truly believed what he was saying. "Marcus, you know how much Aro loved his sister. You remember how he was devastated when we lost her."

"Her death was no accident," Eli asserted.

"She died in battle," Aro said, still seeming at ease. "Maggie, are Caius and I telling the truth?"

"Yes," Maggie answered, looking a little confused. "But Eli is as well."

"He convinced her to accompany him into battle. Then he purposefully drew the attention of the enemy and retreated, leaving her exposed," Edward said. "She never had a chance."

"That is absolutely absurd," Aro said, still maintaining his calm composure. "What motive could I possibly have had?" He reached out to touch Marcus's hand. He seemed to be trying to disguise it as a comforting gesture, but I knew he just wanted to hear what Marcus was thinking.

I considered shielding Marcus, just to spite Aro, but then something happened that I could never have anticipated.

Marcus had been standing there silently during this discussion, his expression unreadable. But when Aro casually reached out to touch his hand, as he must have done so many times before, Marcus grabbed his arm with such force that it tore from his body. Renata gasped in horror, but it was too late for her to shield her master.

Marcus's eyes blazed with fury and vengeance, and he moved with a passion I had not thought him capable of. His teeth were at Aro's throat even before the arm was fully severed. I caught a glimpse of the shock and betrayal on Aro's face as he was decapitated. Even though he had heard nearly every thought Marcus had ever had, it was obvious that he never expected this. Almost before I could process what was happening, Aro had been completely dismembered. A hideous, mournful wail escaped from his severed head as Marcus lit the pyre.

We were all stunned, and for a fraction of a second everyone remained completely motionless, as if someone had paused a video. One of the thin, waifish figures who had been hovering in the background dashed forward, bringing the room back to life. "Aro! My Aro! NO!" she wailed, her wispy voice breaking as she ran toward his remains which were already engulfed in flame. For a moment, I thought she was going to throw herself into the fire, but then she turned and with wild eyes she flung herself at Edward. He easily dodged her attack, and I thought I heard him say something about Sam and Jacob but I wasn't sure what he meant.

The woman, having missed Edward, lunged at the nearest target with her teeth bared. She chose poorly.

Cora reacted instinctively to the attack, and before anyone could stop her, she had cast the remains of Aro's mate into the fire.

That was the point at which I lost my last shred of hope that we might avoid a fight. I had known all along that this was very likely to be a one-way trip, but in that instant the reality of it truly hit me. This time, there would be no time for goodbyes.

I counted quickly. There were twenty-six of us now that Eli was here. And the Volturi forces numbered seventy-one, even with Aro and his mate out of the picture before we began.

"Marcus?" Caius said tentatively, eyeing his fellow leader who had sunk to the floor with his head between his hands.

"These young ones speak the truth," Marcus said in a near-whisper. "It was right after Didyme and I had decided to leave that she was killed. It was the only way he could keep me here, and my talent was too useful to him in battle."

"Then you were justified in your actions," Caius declared. Though he was obviously shocked at Aro's sudden demise, I could almost see the wheels turning in his mind – with Aro out of the picture, Caius would be the undisputed leader.

Marcus gave no response.

"You, however, shouldn't have done that, my dear," Caius said, turning to Cora. "Sulpicia's murder cannot go unpunished." His tone was severe, but he could not completely disguise the glee he obviously felt at having found an excuse to kill us.

I could feel Jane's futile stabs jabbing at various places across my shield.

Alice darted over to Jasper, leaving her cloak behind on the floor. Jasper pulled her close and leaned down to plant a gentle kiss on her forehead.

"Cora was only defending herself," Carlisle said. "We mean you no harm. Sulpicia's death pains me, as does Aro's. Please, just allow us to leave peaceably - before there is additional loss of life."

"A crime has been committed before many witnesses," Caius said, ignoring Carlisle and looking around at his guard. "Sulpicia was clearly distraught and did not deserve her fate. Shall we look the other way to avoid a fight?"

"No, Master," they chorused.

"Justice must be served," Caius said. This seemed to be some sort of signal, for the guard members encircling us took a collective step forward, and then another. They did not seem to be in any great hurry, but drifted forward slowly and methodically. The faint reddish glow I saw around our opponents intensified as the attack began.

Caius himself stepped back to his throne and sat down. Apparently he did not expect to help fight. Of course not - why would he? We were severely outnumbered. Renata hovered around him, ensuring his safety, now that she could no longer shield her true master. It seemed so ironic that she had not even been trying to shield Aro when he was killed.

The rest of the elite guard stood ready to attack but were not advancing on us yet. It seemed they wanted to let the rest of the guard do most of the dirty work for them.

"You don't have to do this," Edward said, addressing the guard members who were closing in on us. "He's using you. He knows most of you will be killed. Do you realize how easily you are replaced? "

A flicker of confusion or doubt rippled across the faces of one or two of the guard members, but it faded as quickly as it had appeared. Their progression continued.

Suddenly, the wolves emerged from the opening to Heidi's tunnel. I was flooded with the mixed emotions of worry and relief when I saw that Sam and Jacob were with their packs. I should have known that they would not go home.

The elite guard immediately scattered. I wasn't sure if they were trying to avoid the wolves or if they might have just been seeking more strategic positions. The regular guard members paused for a split second but then continued toward us.

Sam went straight for Caius, who continued to sit calmly on his throne as he watched Renata deflect his opponent. Caius seemed to take great amusement in watching the large wolf jumping to and fro, never able to reach him. But Sam did not waste time on Caius for long. He joined the others, who had begun encircling the guard members who were preparing to attack us. The guard had become trapped between us and the wolves, but we were still outnumbered.

As if it had been rehearsed, every third guard member simultaneously turned outward to face the wolves. Over half of the wolves immediately fell to the floor, howling and writhing in pain. My first thought was that one of the new guard members must have a powerful talent for inflicting pain, but then I saw Jane smirking in satisfaction as her eyes bore into Paul. My shield! In my shock at seeing Jacob and Sam, I had forgotten to shield them again. Horrified and ashamed at my lapse, I hurriedly maneuvered my shield between the guard members and wrapped it around Sam and Jacob. Sam and his pack stood up again, and if they had been ready to fight before, they were now absolutely livid.

The next few moments passed very quickly. There were shrieks and howls intermingled with the hideous metallic screeching sound of dismemberment. Caius occasionally barked orders to individual guard members, and Edward was coordinating our defense, directing our resources where they were most useful at any given moment.

Zafrina was blinding various guards, shifting as needed. I had learned after our last encounter with the Volturi that although Zafrina could affect multiple vampires at once, as she had done with Tanya and Kate after Irina's death, she could only target the ones in her direct line of vision, and blinding more than one at a time took a great deal of concentration. This meant that with the current configuration of opponents, she could only blind three or four at a time. She had started with Felix and Santiago, the two strongest and best Volturi fighters, but occasionally Edward would ask her to temporarily shift her powers elsewhere.

Caius looked entirely too pleased with himself, and it filled me with fury. The red haze surrounding him flamed brighter. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to end his pompous, arrogant existence. I wanted it as much as I had ever wanted anything in my life. How dare he just sit there calmly as a spectator while my family and friends were fighting for their lives, some of them facing two attackers at once? I heard a snarl rise up from my throat and reminded myself that I was most useful shielding the others. If I could somehow protect them long enough, perhaps I would get my chance with Caius at the end.

So I stood in the middle of the battle which was raging around me, an island being protected at all costs. Not even Renesmee was with me – she had defied Edward's instructions to stay with me and had tried to join the fight, but so far Edward and Jacob had kept themselves between her and any would-be opponents.

Jasper and Alice were working in tandem, guarding one another's backs as they fought off attackers who quickly learned that an attack on one elicited a response from both.

It seemed odd seeing sweet, gentle Esme tearing the limbs off of her opponent, but she could be truly ferocious when defending her family. She stayed close to Carlisle, and they occasionally stepped in to help one another.

The smell of Quileute blood filled the air and I wondered who had been injured. Everyone was moving so fast and shifting positions so frequently that I couldn't figure out who it was. But I could still feel all sixteen sparks in my shield, so at least they were all alive. It took most of my concentration to keep the right people shielded, and I kept scanning the room for Edward and Renesmee, making sure they were still whole.

Eventually, I began to realize that there were noticeably fewer guards than before. But all of the elite guards were still standing; only a few had even joined the fight. So far, it was just the newer, more expendable ones who were being killed. Alec was fighting with Kachiri, who was in the back of the room. He hadn't even bothered trying to release his mist; it would only have incapacitated his own side. Jane was still not physically fighting but was just standing there, continuing to search for holes in my shield. I scanned the room for Kate, who I remembered had called dibs on Jane, but she was on the opposite side of the room torturing Demetri.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw two more people enter the room - Jesse and Fernando! They joined in the fight and I quickly shielded them. I was relieved to see that they had decided to side with us, at least for the time being. I knew that things would probably work out well for Fernando, or he wouldn't have joined in, but I reminded myself that this provided no guarantee for the rest of us.

Then I noticed something very strange. Santiago and Felix, two of the strongest Volturi guards, were fighting one another. My first thought was that they must have been blinded by Zafrina again so that they didn't realize who they were attacking, but they were fighting much too skillfully for that.

"Shield Felix!" Edward called out to me.

I did as he asked, and almost immediately I felt that portion of my shield being bombarded with stabs from Jane. Santiago began swinging wildly and staggered back – Zafrina must have been blinding him again. Felix finished him off and then went after one of the newer guard members. I was baffled as to why he would have suddenly switched sides, but we could use all the help we could get.

The battle was still raging, but we weren't outnumbered as severely as we had been at the beginning. And so far, no one on our side had been killed. But most of the guards that our side had eliminated up to this point were the less skilled fighters, the newer guard members who, although they had obviously been trained in fighting, did not have the decades or centuries of experience that most of the ones remaining had.

"We don't wish to harm you," Carlisle reiterated as he deftly dodged another attack from a random guard member.

"We will protect any who surrender," Edward added, but no one seemed inclined to follow Felix's example.

I noticed Eli and Kate closing in on Jane from opposite directions. To say that she didn't look interested in surrendering would have been a vast understatement. She turned her head back and forth in a rapid, methodical motion as she aimed her ineffectual fire alternately between Eli and Kate. I felt the stabs against my shield even more pointedly than before, but my shield held. As they drew closer to her, she apparently decided that Eli would be the easier target, having already witnessed what Kate do. She lunged at him, and he stepped aside easily as she face-planted onto the floor, writhing and shrieking in agony. She had vastly underestimated Eli, not knowing his talent or how he could use it in a fight. He let Kate do the honors – she shocked her a few times for good measure before completing the dismemberment and throwing her remains onto the pyre. I looked around for Alec, wondering why he had not tried to defend his sister, or at least deaden her pain as she died, but he was nowhere to be found. He must have already been destroyed.

I sensed through my shield that three guards were making their way to the inner circle where I stood. The entire guard had been trying to get to me all along, of course, but so far none had come this close. Alarmed that their progression was not slowing, I spun around and saw that they were being directed there by Carlisle.

"They've surrendered," Edward told me. "They won't hurt you."

The three sat on the floor, cowering in fear and literally shaking with terror – something I had never seen a vampire do before. They were much closer to Carlisle and Jasper than they were to me, but their presence was still unnerving. What if they changed their minds and decided to fight again?

I was distracted from that thought when I heard Benjamin calling out Tia's name in alarm. I looked over and saw him fighting with Heidi, who a moment earlier had appeared content to watch from the sidelines. Tia seemed to be looking for something on the floor. Then Rosalie stepped in and took over with Heidi, and Benjamin dove past them to pick up whatever had just been kicked across the floor. I soon realized it was Tia's hand. Rosalie held Heidi off long enough for him to help her reattach it, and then he joined Rosalie in the fight. Heidi lasted only a few more seconds.

Caius was still calling out orders to his guards, sounding as confident as ever of their eventual victory.

Then I heard an unusually shrill scream followed by some painful howls by the wolves. I scanned the room to see where it came from, and I noticed Paul and Brady delivering some more pieces to the fire – Sam had destroyed another guard. I could smell something sweet, almost floral, mingled with the less pleasant scent of the wolves and the smoke.

Sam was running at Renata full-speed, apparently confident that he was now shielded and would not be redirected. He lunged at Renata with his teeth bared. She stood in front of Caius, who was still seated on his throne, with her arms extended to the sides. She was so close to him that it looked like the back of her legs might be touching Caius's knees. Two women, whom I assumed must be Caius's mate and Corin, stood just behind Caius.

Sam was not redirected, but he was still unable to touch her - as soon as he came within about ten feet of her, she had moved backward, almost as if she were being pushed, and Caius on his throne was pushed backward as well. The two women also stepped back, and the four of them looked very confused.

I had felt a strange rippling pulse along the part of my shield that covered Sam's mouth when he had lunged at her. Had that sensation been caused by contact with Renata's shield? Intrigued, I flexed my shield out from Sam slightly and extended it toward Renata, keeping Sam shielded but allowing some space between him and the barrier of my shield. The rippling sensation was now occurring in a larger area. I continued to push my shield toward her, letting the exterior of my shield wrap around toward the back of hers from both the left and the right.

I could feel the pulsing sensation all along the surface of where our shields met, which allowed me to make out the shape of the shield Renata was projecting out from herself. It extended from the floor to a point that was several feet above her head, and it encircled her and the three she was protecting, extending out with a radius of about ten feet. It was larger than I had anticipated, and apparently, my shield could not pass through hers. It occurred to me that our shields seemed to be trying to repel one another – that was probably what was causing that pulsing sensation. My shield still protected our minds, so that she could not confuse our thoughts to divert us away, but no one protected by my shield could physically pass through the barrier of hers.

Renata was looking around nervously, and I wondered if she could feel the rippling as well. I tried pushing my shield in closer to her, trying to squeeze her shield in from all directions to see if I could reduce her range, but as I pushed harder it just made the ripples larger and more forceful. Her shield did not move.

Sam lunged at Renata a second time while Tanya and Cora tried approaching the group from behind, but none of them could physically pass through the barrier where my shield met Renata's.

"Jake, you have to let me try," I heard Renesmee plead from somewhere behind me.

Jake could only growl and snarl, but his meaning was abundantly clear.

Somehow, despite the many attempts to protect her, Renesmee managed to get past Jake and Edward and the rest of our family and ran for Renata. My panic level was through the roof as I saw my baby dart toward the four vampires who would surely tear her apart. I saw her too late to physically intervene. I could only join the chorus of my family screaming, "No!" as she hurled herself toward Renata. Then, thankfully, she was stopped by the pulsing barrier just as the others had been. She may have had the ability to pass through Renata's shield as well as the ability to pass through mine, but she could not unshield herself when I was shielding her.

She turned to me, her face flushed with anger and tears of frustration dripping down her cheeks. "Mom, unshield me!" she pleaded. "I'm the only one who can get through!"

I shook my head, knowing she was right, but unwilling to let her try. I doubted I could get my shield off of her at that moment even if I wanted to.

"Ness, listen to me," Edward demanded. "You could pass through, but you can't disable it. You would be facing four full vampires with no one to help you!"

"But Dad – "

"It would be suicide!"

"But Zafrina could – "

"No," Edward told her firmly, shaking his head for emphasis. "They could still feel your attack and respond."

"Listen to your father," Alice said. "You wouldn't survive."

Nessie's shoulders slumped in defeat, and she reluctantly allowed Jacob to escort her back to the relative safety of our inner circle. She knew not to argue with Alice.

The red haze I saw around Caius glowed even more brightly when I caught a glimpse of the smug look on his face, and as I wondered if my increasing fury might somehow allow me to direct more power to my shield, the pulsing inexplicably stopped. I pushed my shield closer and closer until I could feel Renata's light against the exterior of my shield. Her shield had vanished!

Had I done something? I hadn't _felt_ any additional power flowing through my shield. Renata looked completely bewildered, but Caius and the two women behind him did not seem aware of the change.

"Her shield is gone!" I heard Edward whisper to Carlisle.

"What?" Carlisle asked, alarmed.

"No, not Bella's – Renata's!" he clarified. "Jesse has taken it from her."

I scanned the room for Jesse and quickly found him; he was walking easily through the ongoing battle as those fighting around him moved out of his way as he passed.

"Caius!" Carlisle called out, as he continued defending himself against one of the guards.

"Yes, Carlisle?" Caius responded in a condescending tone of voice, still completely unaware of the danger he was in.

"I give you one last chance to stand down. Call off your guards and we can all go our own ways peaceably," Carlisle implored.

Caius laughed heartily, still thinking he had the upper hand.

"Master, my shield is gone," Renata finally informed him, her voice trembling.

Caius whispered something to Corin, and she nodded.

The two of them crouched in an attack posture and immediately launched themselves at me, flying over the heads of those engaged in battle between us. I assumed a defensive posture, remembering the technique Jasper had taught me, but it proved unnecessary. They were blocked by Alice and Edward.

Tanya and Cora took over with Caius, quickly ripping him to shreds. I had never seen such vengeance in Tanya's eyes; she was doing this for Irina.

Jasper jumped in to help Alice finish off Corin.

The way Caius's mate reacted was similar to the way Sulpicia had responded when Aro had been killed – she lunged at Sam, who was the nearest target, with her teeth bared. As they began to fight, it was abundantly clear that she was not a skilled fighter, and I suspected that she had only thrown herself at him because she no longer wished to live. And Sam was more than happy to tear her apart. Soon, her remains, along with Caius's and Corin's, were added to the fire.

Sam then headed for Renata, but Edward stopped him.

"Sam, don't harm her," Edward ordered. "She poses no threat."

A small, disappointed whine escaped Sam's throat as he turned away. Renata looked surprised and grateful; it was obvious that she was not a fighter. And with her ability to shield stripped from her, she looked completely lost as to what she should be doing.

"Marcus?" Edward called out.

Marcus, who was still sitting on the floor with his head in his hands, had been all but forgotten by everyone else in the room. He looked up but did not verbally respond.

"Can you ask them to stop?" Edward asked, stepping closer to Marcus and gesturing to the guard members who were still attacking our people.

"You can all stand down; there is nothing to be gained by further fighting," Marcus said tiredly, just barely loud enough to be heard. It seemed to require great effort just for him to speak.

The guard members who had still been fighting backed off and assumed defensive postures, ready to respond if our side did not honor the truce.

Could the battle really be over? I looked at Edward, verifying that he was still unharmed. His shirt was torn on one side, but he still appeared whole and perfect. He was standing next to our precious daughter, making sure she was okay, and the guard who had been fighting him was staring in disbelief that Edward would turn his back on his opponent. I breathed a sigh of relief. Tears still streamed down Renesmee's face, and she still seemed upset, but who wouldn't be after what she had just been through?

It was then that I realized I was not shielding as many people as before. While I had been concentrating on Renata, two of the lights had disappeared from my shield. As the remaining guard members stepped back, returning to their posts along the wall, I saw that Nahuel's sisters had not come through unscathed. Mishna was hovering anxiously over the bodies of her two half-siblings, and Carlisle was making his way over to them. Then I looked around to the other side of the room and gasped in horror when I saw that one of the wolves – Quil – was lying on the ground, his body twisted into an unnatural position and his fur matted with blood. Seth lay next to him, unmoving, in human form. Seth was still alive, as was Shua, but their sparks in my shield were dim, and Seth's hands and arms were covered in blood. Quil's and Lauhne's sparks were completely gone. The elation I had felt when I had seen that the battle was over was dampened as I began to realize the cost.

Edward came over to me and took both of my hands in his.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine," I said. "Can you check on Seth? He's alive but he's not moving."

Edward nodded. "I was just headed over there. Most of his injuries are already healing, but Carlisle wants me to check on his leg."

He walked over to Seth, who was still unconscious, and began inspecting the leg. He glanced back over his shoulder briefly, giving a nod to Felix before turning back to Seth. Felix then took charge of the remaining guard members, including Renata and the three who had surrendered, and directed them all to stand to one side of the room as we tended to our wounded. They seemed unsure about Felix, their superior who had turned against them, but they did as he instructed. Jasper went and stood near Felix, sending a clear signal that Felix's actions were being done with our approval.

Seth was beginning to move again. He put his hand to his forehead and looked around, confused.

"You passed out after you were injured," Edward told him. "You're going to be okay. The fight's over."

"Quil - We've got to help Quil! He was bitten!" Seth screamed, suddenly remembering what had been going on before he lost consciousness. He started to move closer to Quil but grimaced as he realized his leg couldn't bear weight. He dragged himself closer using just his arms and his other leg and began skillfully inspecting Quil's injuries and checking for vital signs. When he was unable to find a pulse, he looked up at Edward, his eyes begging Edward to tell him it wasn't too late.

"I'm sorry," Edward said, his voice thick with emotion.

Seth slumped forward, resting his head against Quil's neck. His shoulders began to shake slightly, and then he took a deep breath and let out a jagged sigh as he tried to gain control of his emotions.

Jacob, Embry, and the two younger wolves in their pack phased back into human form and gathered around them. I shifted my gaze to the other side of the room, not wanting to intrude any further on their grief.

Edward went to help Carlisle with Shua. I couldn't really tell what was going on with her, but it looked like Carlisle was making some sutures. I marveled at his forethought; he had worn a pouch with some emergency medical items strapped beneath his shirt. Mishna was watching anxiously, tears streaming down her face.

I felt someone brush against my arm, and realized Renesmee had come up beside me.

"Is it really over?" she asked me, glancing meaningfully at Felix and the other remaining guard members.

"I think so," I said. "The ones who wanted us dead have all been destroyed – Aro, Caius, Jane, Alec, and most of the elite guard."

"Mom, was Alec the young boy with light brown hair?" she asked with an odd look on her face.

"Yes," I said, beginning to wonder what was wrong. "Did you see who killed him?"

She placed the palm of her hand against the side of my face and showed me her memory of Alec slipping out the door. He had escaped!

"He never came back in?"I asked.

Renesmee shook her head. "I didn't see him if he did."

It surprised me that he had abandoned his sister that way. Perhaps he was plotting to exact revenge after the battle was over. I was glad that I still had everyone shielded .

"Do you think Seth is going to be okay?" Renesmee asked.

"I think so," I said. "Your dad seemed mostly concerned about his leg. Do you have any idea why he phased back to human form while we were still fighting?"

She placed her hand against my cheek again and showed me what had happened. Quil had been bitten early in the battle – that would explain the blood I had smelled earlier - but he had continued fighting, eventually defeating the vampire who had bitten him as well as some others. Near the end, he had been trying to block the attack on Shua and Launhe when he was bitten again and a large chunk was torn from his shoulder. He had collapsed, bleeding profusely. That was when Seth had returned to human form. Seth had just started checking out Quil's injuries when one of the guards had kicked him in the leg and thrown him to the floor like a ragdoll. He had lost consciousness shortly thereafter.

"What's Dad doing now?" she whispered as she dropped her hand from my face.

I followed her gaze and saw that Edward and Marcus seemed to be locked in a silent conversation. Throughout the battle, Marcus had sat quietly off to the side – so quietly, in fact, that I had not even been registering his presence as I had watched the fighting go on around me. Now, as he and Edward looked at each other, they seemed to be staring into one another's very souls. Marcus's eyes were pleading; Edward's were pained.

Edward gave a single nod, and Marcus kneeled down on the ground, facing away from Edward, his head lowered.

Before I could begin to wonder what Marcus was doing, Edward had lunged forward, his teeth sinking deep into Marcus's neck, and then Marcus's head was no longer attached to his body. Edward made no delay in completing the dismemberment and adding the pieces to the fire.

"Edward!" Esme exclaimed, shocked.

"Why did you do that?" I demanded in confusion, having seen no threat in Marcus. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized I already knew the answer. Their situations had once been reversed. Edward understood Marcus's pain and had granted his request.

"He told me he wanted to join Didyme on the other side of forever. I saw no reason to deny him."

There was some murmuring among our group, but no one truly mourned the loss of the last remaining Volturi leader. Some may have hated him because of what he stood for, and some may have felt sorry for him. But no one could deny that there had been nothing left for him. His life had already continued for many centuries beyond the time that it had contained meaning.

The remnant of the Volturi guard reacted a little more strongly to Marcus's death, but their shouts seemed to be tinged with fear and confusion rather than sadness or anger. Edward ignored them, returning to my side, and I saw that Eli was going over to talk to them. I heard Eli calming them, explaining to them that Marcus had asked for death and that we had no plans to kill anyone else.

"What _is_ going to happen to them?" I asked, tilting my head toward the large group that Eli was reassuring. I didn't want to think about what might happen if the leaderless group was turned loose in the outside world. Would there be any reason for them to continue following the Volturi's rule of non-exposure? Would there be any reason for _any_ vampire to follow that rule?

"There are several decisions that still need to be made," Edward said. "We'll have to discuss the options when Carlisle gets finished with Shua and Seth."

"Are they going to be okay?" I asked.

"Seth's leg will need to be rebroken, and he'll need surgery to set the bones properly, but he's going to be fine. I'm not sure about Shua. He's repaired her internal injuries but he's worried about how to close the wound in her skin – it's not self-healing. He's considering using venom, but we have no idea what effect it might have on her system. It could be fatal, like it is for the wolves."

"But Quil kept fighting after he was bitten the first time," I pointed out, feeling hopeful that this one legend might be wrong.

Edward shook his head. "It's slow-acting, but it was poisoning his system and gradually slowing his ability to respond. It also interfered with his body's self-healing properties. His wounds weren't that severe; he would still be alive if not for the venom."

He pulled me to him and wrapped his arms around me, and I rested my head on his shoulder as he stroked my hair. I inhaled his scent and felt immense joy at simply having him in my arms again.

"I can't tell you how relieved I am that you and Nessie weren't harmed," he breathed.

"I was so worried that I would lose you," I whispered in his ear. "And I feel so guilty that I can be this ridiculously happy right now."

He pulled back slightly so that he could see my face. "Same here," he confessed, pausing to caress my jaw line with the back of his hand. "Would it be horribly inappropriate if I kissed you right now?"

I closed my eyes and welcomed the feel of his lips against mine. And for a brief time I allowed myself to simply relish our victory. For those few moments, it was just the two of us, and all was right with the world.

* * *

**A/N: I wrote the Edward/Marcus scene about two years ago when I was first outlining my plans for the last half of the story. When I first mentioned that idea to my beta, she seemed appalled by the assisted suicide and thought it out of character for Edward, but after she read it written out, she agreed it should be included. I would like to state for the record that I am not a proponent of assisted suicide, and in real life, with human beings, I do not think that suicide is ever the best solution to any of life's problems, especially loneliness or a lost love as was the situation with Marcus. But in the case of a mythical creature whose existence would otherwise never end, who has been living a meaningless existence for over two millennia, and who by definition is incapable of changing, it was hard for me to imagine any other ending.**

**I'd _really_ love to hear your thoughts on this chapter. Was it what you were hoping for? Were there any parts that you loved or hated? I hope it lived up to your expectations for the climax of the Volturi-related plot line.**


	36. Council

Chapter 36: Council

"Mom! Dad! You've got to see this!"

I looked in the direction of my daughter's excited voice and saw that she and several others were gathered around Carlisle and his hybrid patient, Shua.

"The venom seems to be working," Edward said, a smile spreading across his face as we hurried over for a closer look at what was going on.

Shua was fully conscious, and from the expression on her face it was obvious that she was in intense pain, but she was enduring it silently. Emmett and Rosalie were restraining her, and Mishna was whispering to her and stroking her hair.

It was rather unnerving to see the open wound up close. Renesmee had the same physiology, and I fully realized that it could easily have been my daughter who was lying here with a gaping wound. But I was unable to look away, for her skin was regenerating right before my eyes. Within seconds, what had been a large wound was fully healed, and all that remained was a thin scar outlining where Carlisle had applied his venom.

"So the venom doesn't affect her like it does us?" asked Jacob, who had come over just in time to see the wound close. The significance for Nessie was not lost on any of us - if she were ever hurt, Edward or I should be able to heal any cuts to the skin.

"I was careful not to let it enter the bloodstream," Carlisle said. "I applied it only to the damaged areas of the skin."

"Can she get up now?" Mishna asked.

"Do you feel like standing?" Carlisle asked his patient as Emmett and Rosalie released her.

Shua stood up easily. "I feel fine now!" she exclaimed, looking at Carlisle in awe as she reached down to touch her newly-healed skin. "Thank you!" Her mouth trembled and tears were welling up in her eyes.

"You need to take it easy," Carlisle cautioned. "You are fully healed on the outside, but it may take a few weeks for everything on the inside to get back to normal. Don't overexert yourself."

"I'll be careful," she promised.

Carlisle then went to check on his second patient. "How are you feeling, Seth?" he asked.

"I'll be okay," Seth answered. "Edward says you'll need to do surgery on my leg, but I'd prefer to do that when we get home, if you don't mind."

"Yes, I think that's best," Carlisle agreed as he looked over the injured leg. "I don't have the proper tools here, and I think you might want some anesthesia. We can do it at my house. Were you injured anywhere else? None of this blood is yours?"

Seth just shook his head and bit his lip as a tear threatened to escape. Edward had already told me that the blood was all Quil's.

"I'm terribly sorry about Quil," Carlisle told him. "We will always remember his sacrifice. If there's anything at all that we can do for his family…." He trailed off, knowing his offer was unlikely to be accepted.

"Thank you," Seth said simply.

"We'll find you some crutches, or make some, before we leave for the airport," Edward said.

Seth nodded, and then we turned our attention to Felix and the group that he and Jasper were guarding.

"Thank you for your assistance, Felix," Carlisle said formally, walking over to him. "It was much appreciated."

"Glad I could be of service," Felix responded, bowing his head slightly in deference.

"May I ask what caused you to switch sides?" Carlisle inquired.

A look of concentration came over Felix's his face. "After… what happened with Aro…," he began, "I knew it was my duty to protect Caius, but his order to attack didn't make sense. At best, the guard would be decimated, and he knew it. I started questioning everything, but there was no time to think. I just suddenly realized I was fighting for the wrong side."

"Chelsea's artificial bonds that tied you to Aro were broken when he died," Edward told him. "She never bound you to Caius or Marcus. Same with Renata, she was bound only to Aro as well."

"You're saying my loyalty to Aro was only because of Chelsea?" Felix asked. He sounded offended, but then he seemed to give the idea some consideration. "I know you can read minds, but how could you know that? She wasn't even here."

"She doesn't have to be present; the bonds she creates persist for a very long time," Edward explained. "I could see them through Marcus's eyes. The ones she created or enhanced looked different from bonds that had formed naturally. Some of your loyalty - the part that still remains – was natural, but she had greatly reinforced it. With Aro gone, you were able to make your own decisions without your judgment being clouded by Chelsea's influence. That's what allowed you to accept the fact that Caius had no valid reason for attacking us."

"I guess that makes sense," Felix reluctantly agreed. "I had never felt the same affinity for Caius as I did for Aro. And with Aro gone, if we had succeeded in defeating you, Caius would have ruled alone – he never seemed to value Marcus's input the way Aro did. Even when it was obvious that you were winning, Caius kept ordering us to continue the attack, knowing that the entire guard would be destroyed. He had no intention of helping, and it made no sense to sacrifice myself for him. I remembered Carlisle from his earlier time here, so I knew he would be a more worthy leader than Caius."

"Carlisle is not your master," Edward told him emphatically. "Neither am I. We hope to let each of you go your own way once we've assured ourselves that we can do so safely. Jasper has a plan he'd like to …"

Edward's voice stopped suddenly as Felix and the rest of the remaining guard members all stiffened and stared past him.

"Well, well, well," said a feathery voice.

"What have we here?" said his companion.

I had heard those voices before. We all turned to face the two Romanians.

"You've been _very_ naughty this time, haven't you?" observed Stefan, looking appreciatively at the nearly faded plume of purple smoke.

"We weren't sure you had it in you," Vladimir added.

"Why did you spare the rest of them?" Stefan questioned, glancing over at Felix and the others with mild annoyance.

"They surrendered," Carlisle said simply.

"Only you," Vladimir said, shaking his head.

"Well, you got the ones who mattered," Stefan said.

"Bella, would you mind shielding everyone but them?" Edward asked, indicating the Romanians.

"I am," I whispered back. "Do you mean you want me to unshield you so that you're not hearing everyone else?"

"Yes, it's rather noisy in here," he said. "Do you mean you've never let down your shield? You must be exhausted."

"Alec is still out there," I said, confused.

"What?" Edward exclaimed, shocked. He was no longer whispering. "Alec got away?"

There was some murmuring throughout the group; apparently the others had not noticed either. Renesmee placed her hand against Edward's face, though it was unnecessary with him, and showed him what she had shown me.

"How did I miss that?" he growled, becoming angry with himself.

"He didn't get far," Vladimir announced. "We took care of him."

"I assure you, it was our pleasure," said Stefan. "We had been waiting for _centuries_ to unleash our vengeance on that boy."

Everyone visibly relaxed. I breathed a sigh of relief and released my shield, allowing it to retract back to its natural state where it protected only my own mind. The fury I had felt during the battle had made it effortless to maintain, but after the main threat had ended, my shield had become somewhat mentally draining again. It felt good to return to normal. Then I remembered Edward's request and shielded all but him and the Romanians so that he could monitor their thoughts without distraction. Then Edward told me that he might need to communicate with Carlisle and Eli, so I unshielded them too.

"This is quite an army you've amassed here," Vladimir said appreciatively as he scanned the room. Then he turned back to Carlisle very abruptly and said, "Well, we just wanted to say 'thank you.'"

"And congratulations on your accomplishment," Stefan added.

I stared at them, bewildered, as they turned to leave as suddenly as they had arrived.

"Not so fast," Eli called out. "You recognized Cora. What are you hiding?"

The two stopped and turned to face us once more.

Vladimir raised his eyebrows and then shrugged. "It no longer matters."

"No, it doesn't," Stefan agreed. "What's the worst they can do? Kill us?"

The two of them looked at one another with amused smiles.

"It was _you_!" Alice suddenly exclaimed. "You two were the ones with Nick right before he changed me!"

The two Romanians looked startled. They exchanged another glance but said nothing.

I felt shocked as well, but the pieces were beginning to fall into place in my mind, and it suddenly made sense. I had not recognized their voices when Eli had imitated them as he scanned Alice's memories. But that was because he was relaying how they had sounded to Alice's _human_ ears. I had never encountered the Romanians until I was a vampire, so their voices had sounded different to me. But the way Nick's "friends" had completed one another's thoughts, and the ancient quality I remembered hearing in their voices, confirmed in my mind that Alice was correct. Nick had been working with the Romanians.

"Yes, Nicholai," I heard Edward say, apparently reading the full name from their minds. "What were you doing with him?"

"What do you know of him?" Vladimir demanded, his own curiosity obviously getting the better of him.

"Does he yet live?" Stefan asked, beginning to seem concerned. "We assumed him dead nearly a century ago."

"No, he didn't continue without you," Edward said. "James killed him, just as you had assumed."

"Well, it seems that you know more than we do," Stefan said.

"So you're the special one," Vladimir said, looking at Alice. "I guess he was right about you after all."

"Yes," Stefan added, looking at her curiously. "Such a strong and useful gift. It's no wonder that Aro coveted it above all others. Had Nicholai told us exactly how special you were, we might have risked staying around to help him fight off the tracker."

"Perhaps this day could have come sooner," agreed Vladimir.

"So what were you planning to do with us?" Fernando demanded. "If you were creating an army to fight the Volturi, why were we taught to fear and avoid them? And why were we denied human blood?"

"You're _all_ here," Vladimir said in wonder, apparently noticing Fernando and Jesse for the first time. He began laughing, and the raspy sound coming from his throat seemed unnatural. I wondered how many centuries had passed since he'd last made that sound.

"In a way, it seems our plan worked after all," Stefan said.

"And that plan was?" Carlisle prompted.

"It was a miserable failure, and yet you have achieved our goal on your own," Vladimir said.

"We did not come here to eliminate the Volturi," Carlisle told him. "They forced our hand. We were only defending ourselves."

"Yes, yes, we know," said Stefan. "We were counting on that happening eventually."

"You were the ideal candidate to lead a revolt," said Vladimir. "They trusted you and knew you would never initiate conflict, so they didn't even bother to monitor you when you left them. We thought if we created and trained some talented soldiers and groomed them to embrace your diet, you might be able to amass a talented army without the Volturi's notice. But Nicholai became attached to his human pet, and we all underestimated that tracker."

Red crept into my vision again as I began to comprehend what they had been planning, and the red haze flamed brighter as Vladimir continued speaking. The Romanians had been trying to manipulate Carlisle into eliminating the Volturi for them! Who did they think they were, to play with people's lives like that? I glanced around and saw looks of anger on several other faces as well.

"It was too dangerous for us to continue without Nicholai around to remove our self-incriminating memories," Stefan added, seemingly unaware of the fury they were inciting. "We've been deep in hiding for the last century. We took a huge risk visiting you before. If Aro had taken our thoughts, he would have had us destroyed on the spot."

"And we would not have lived to see this day," Vladimir said with a satisfied smile, glancing again in the direction of the pyre.

"You caused us to spend our lives in fear of the Volturi!" Cora shouted angrily. "You told us they were looking for us!"

"We had to give you _some_ reason to stay around long enough for us to train you," Stefan told her with a shrug.

Cora responded with a growl.

"You also humiliated us and deprived us of blood," added Fernando as he dropped into a crouch.

"We never asked for this life," Jesse said angrily.

I realized things were about to become physical again, and I welcomed it. The red intensified further. This time, I could participate in the action. They would not last long.

I felt Edward's hands come to rest gently at my waist from behind me. "They're not worth it, love," he whispered in my ear.

"Such irony," Stefan said with a chuckle. "We left your Alice for dead, and she was the only one who followed our plan."

A growl rose up in my throat as I thought of all the agony Alice went through as a human because of the Romanians, and the way they left her for dead. It was their fault that she woke up alone, with no memory of who or what she was. I slipped out of Edward's hands and started toward the Romanians, right behind Cora, Jesse, and Fernando. If I didn't hurry, I wouldn't get to help destroy them.

Suddenly, I found myself being knocked down to the floor. Edward's arms encircled my waist once more, and this time his grip was firm. I somehow landed on top of him and struggled to wriggle loose as I protested his interference.

"Stop! There's been enough carnage today," I heard Carlisle saying over the screeching sound of vampire teeth against immortal skin. For once, the hideous sound was welcome, and I couldn't believe Carlisle wanted to let them go! Just as I was about to free myself, Eli appeared and helped Edward get me pinned down again.

"Out of my way, Alice!" Emmett growled.

I couldn't see what was going on behind me, but it sounded like more people were joining the fray.

Jesse, Cora, and Fernando seemed to have paused in their attack, confused by the fact that the two Romanians had not made a move to defend themselves and were not fighting back at all.

"Rose! No!" Carlisle shouted.

Edward rolled us to the side, but Rosalie's elbow still hit my arm with considerable force as she landed next to me. Carlisle had thwarted her attack by physically intercepting her and slamming her to the floor. Esme was helping to hold her down, and I saw that Garrett and Jasper were helping Alice hold Emmett back.

I then realized that Jesse, Fernando, and Cora still had not resumed their attack. They were just standing there staring at the Romanians.

"Why do I suddenly feel such a sense of calm?" Fernando asked, directing the question to Carlisle.

"That would be Jasper," Alice answered. "We all need to calm down. Carlisle's right; there's nothing to be gained by attacking them."

Jasper's efforts were affecting me as well. The red haze was gone. I still intensely disliked what the Romanians had just told us, but I was beginning to think reasonably again. The Romanians posed no current threat; in fact, they were essentially defenseless against us. Carlisle was right – killing them would be wrong, no matter how enjoyable it might have been.

Vladimir rubbed absently at his arms which now sported a number of fresh bite marks, and Stefan reattached his foot as if he were doing something as mundane as putting on a shoe.

"It seems we've overstayed our welcome," Vladimir observed.

"Yes, I believe we are finished here," agreed Stefan as the two of them turned to leave.

"Actually, we're about to discuss some things that you should probably be present for," Carlisle said with a sigh.

Vladimir raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"We were just getting ready to discuss how our world is going to maintain order without the Volturi," Carlisle explained. "We need to come up with a plan, and we'd like your input. We wish to exclude no one."

"We want nothing to do with any such 'plan'," Stefan said, glancing at his companion, "but we'll stay to hear what you have to say."

Carlisle gave a slight nod in acknowledgement of his words and then looked around at the crowd of vampires who were all looking at him expectantly.

"You can drop your shield," Edward whispered to me. "You must be exhausted." I did as he suggested; it was a relief to let it retract.

"Our actions here today have the potential for far-reaching consequences," Carlisle began. "I had hoped for a more peaceful resolution to this conflict, and I was reluctant to even consider this outcome as a possibility. Despite their shortcomings, the Volturi had been serving some vital functions with their self-imposed government."

He paused, looking around at certain of those present in case they wanted to respond. I heard some brief whispering, but no one spoke up.

"For example," he continued, "their rule of non-exposure, while it may have been instituted for their own convenience initially, has become truly necessary. With current human technology, if the wrong person were to learn of us, it could be communicated around the world almost instantly, and humanity now has access to weapons which could threaten us, if not destroy us. Even if those weapons couldn't kill us, their use could be extremely detrimental to the planet and could affect our blood supply – both animal and human. Is there anyone present who disagrees with the idea that we need to maintain the rule of non-exposure?"

Some people shook their heads in answer to the question, while others just stood silently. No one spoke up to voice protest.

"I don't think any of us here today has any desire to reign in the Volturi's stead," Carlisle continued, "but there may be times when the rule of non-exposure needs to be enforced, or times when an exposure occurs and needs to be contained. Jasper has a plan as to how we might accomplish that, and I ask all of you to please hear him out. Jasper?"

"As a veteran of the Southern Wars, I can attest to the need for there to be a presence that enforces the rule of non-exposure," Jasper began. "At the same time, I think we all agree that we want to avoid the situation where one coven could elevate themselves to the level of royalty. My plan is for us to appoint three representatives, each from different covens, who would form a council that would serve for a two-year period. Every two years, three new representatives would be appointed."

"So this council would go around exterminating covens who violate the rule?" Cora asked.

"Not necessarily," Jasper said.

"We would first attempt to educate the offenders about the rule and why it is necessary, and try to get their agreement to follow it," said Carlisle. "I'm convinced that most of those who were punished by the Volturi were simply ignorant of the rule and were never given a chance."

My mind went back to Bree, the terrified newborn whose destruction I had witnessed.

"Only those who blatantly and repeatedly disregard the rule would be executed," Jasper said. "It would be a last resort. Simply knowing the council exists should be enough to deter most of those who don't recognize the value of the non-exposure rule. I expect that more frequent duties for the council members would involve assisting with damage control in cases of exposure that occurred by accident, mistake, or ignorance. The council would help remove the evidence, discredit the humans who witnessed it, provide alternate explanations that humans would find reasonable, alter any video footage, that sort of thing. It would serve as a resource available to anyone who needs that type of assistance."

"And the rest of us would assemble when it's necessary to enforce the rule?" Eleazar asked.

"Yes, the council could call on the rest of us any time they need assistance," Jasper said, "although I think it's unlikely we'll encounter any threats large enough to require _all_ of us to assemble again. It's more likely that they would call on just a few of us for any given situation, and there may be some cases where a particular talent would be helpful. And of course, I'm sure the two wolf packs would be more than happy to help out with flagrant violations."

The Quileutes all voiced their agreement.

"Would this council maintain a presence here in Volterra?" Felix asked.

"I don't think that would be necessary," Jasper said. "But that decision could be left up to the council once it is appointed. I suppose there could be certain logistical benefits since the compound is already set up."

"What will become of the guard?" Felix asked. "Will we be required to disperse?"

Jasper just looked at him for a moment, confused, and then asked, "Is _that_ what has them all so worried?"

"Most of us lived and worked here even as humans," said one of the guards whose name I didn't know. "I would like to remain here if it is permitted."

"It would be easier for us to avoid exposure if we could stay in Volterra," added another, and several others voiced agreement.

"I've been helping enforce the non-exposure rule for centuries," said Felix. "I would like to continue in that role if I could be of use to you."

"We hadn't considered that this many of you would want to remain and assist the council," Edward told them.

"The others want to assist the council as well?" Carlisle asked in surprise.

"Many of them are less than ten years old," Felix said, looking over the group of former guard members. "After our original attack on your coven was aborted, my masters began offering more of the humans who were already in our service the opportunity to join us. Most of the ones here, at the time of their transformation, were eager to serve in the guard. They know no other way of life. It is not surprising to me that they would wish to retain their previous duties."

"You will all be free to do as you please," Carlisle told them. "I see no harm in your remaining here at Volterra if that is what you wish, though that decision would be up to the council. But I want to be clear that you do not owe us your service."

"Why don't we proceed with nominations for the council," Edward suggested, "and the former guard members can make their decision after it has been appointed."

Carlisle nodded in agreement. "First, are there any objections to the _idea_ of the council?" he asked.

"I'm pretty sure Amun would object," said Benjamin. "But he would object to anything. My vote is to proceed."

Carlisle looked questioningly at Stefan and Vladimir. "Do either of you have any objections?" he asked.

The two of them just shrugged.

"We have no interest in your plans," Stefan said.

"You have no objection to keeping the non-exposure rule in place or to the appointment of a council that will enforce that rule?" Carlisle persisted.

"We have no burning desire to go out and expose ourselves to humans, if that's what you're worried about," Vladimir said. "Our business here is concluded."

The two of them turned and left the room without looking back, and no one made a move to stop them. It was good riddance, as far as I was concerned. If we weren't going to destroy them, I hoped at least to never see them again.

"Well, then," said Carlisle, after they had gone, "do we have any nominations or volunteers?"

There was silence at first, and then Siobhan spoke up. "I nominate you, Carlisle."

"I don't want to serve in the first term," Carlisle said firmly, shaking his head for emphasis. "I would be willing to serve at some point in the future, but if I were to accept the nomination right now, I'm sure there would be some who would accuse me of attacking the Volturi so that I could rule in their place."

"I think we need at least one person with a talent that can be used to help ensure fair judgments," Jasper said. "Edward, Eli, Cora, or Maggie – can one of you volunteer?"

The four of them looked at one another for a moment, and then Eli stepped forward. "I can do it," he said.

"Any objections to Eli being on the initial council?" Carlisle asked.

Several people voiced support, but there were no objections.

"Okay, we need two more," Carlisle said.

"I nominate Siobhan," Maggie said.

"I'd prefer to give others a chance first," Siobhan said. "I have no special talents. There are many others who would be a better choice."

"You are liked and respected throughout our world," said Maggie. "Our many acquaintances who aren't here today would know that the council is legitimate as soon as your name is mentioned. Please, Siobhan."

"She's right," agreed Carlisle. "Your presence would give the council credibility."

"It would also help make it more diverse," added Jasper. "The initial council should not be all male or all vegetarian. You could help provide that balance."

"All right," she conceded. "I will serve this term if Carlisle will serve the next."

"You drive a hard bargain, Siobhan," Carlisle said. They smiled at one another, seeming to have a private exchange, and then his face grew serious again. "I'll agree if there are no objections raised before it's time for the next term."

"We need one more," said Jasper.

"What about Eleazar?" Zafrina suggested. "He served with the Volturi in the past, so he might have some advantage in working with the former guard members who have volunteered to assist us; it might help put them at ease."

"Eli and I are in the same coven now," Eleazar said, shaking his head. "And we're both vegetarian – those with our diet would be disproportionately represented in the council. I think_ you_ should volunteer; that way, we would have representation from three different continents."

Zafrina looked as though she was taken aback by the suggestion, but before she could respond, Edward spoke up.

"I nominate Felix," he said.

"What?" I asked, turning to look at my husband. Felix? Hadn't we just removed the Volturi from power? The others appeared shocked at the idea as well, and everyone began talking at once.

But no one looked more surprised than Felix himself. "Me?" was all he managed to say.

"Zafrina had a good point," Edward explained. "We do need someone who can work with the guard members who choose to remain here and assist us. They already know Felix and respect him. He provided much of their training. And he's not exactly one of Carlisle's long-time friends, so that should help eliminate any suspicion from others that our family is trying to take over."

"But he's 'vegetarian,'" objected Jesse. "That would make two on the council."

"I don't think he's planning to continue the diet," Eli said, and then turned to Felix. "Are you?"

"No, I don't think so," Felix said hesitantly, as if he were unsure if the answer would be acceptable. "I was only doing that for Aro. And I wasn't very good at it."

His odd orange eyes attested to that.

"Would you be willing to serve on the council, Felix?" asked Carlisle.

"I've never been in a leadership position before," he hedged, still looking stunned at the possibility.

"Sure you have," Edward argued. "You've been leading the guard for centuries. Aro just didn't want you to realize how much control you had. That's why he never allowed you to wear a darker cloak."

Felix appeared to think about that for a moment before he spoke. "I'd be willing to do it," he said, "but I find it hard to believe that any of you would trust me that much."

"If Edward trusts you, that's good enough for me," Emmett said, and several of us voiced our agreement. I would never have thought of suggesting Felix, but it did make sense once Edward had explained his reasoning. Besides, Edward knew his thoughts, and if he thought Felix was a good choice, I trusted his judgment.

"Maggie?" asked Siobhan, looking to her friend for confirmation.

"He's been honest with us today," she replied. "I see no reason not to trust him."

"Eli?" Siobhan asked, turning to her fellow council member.

"I think he's the perfect choice," Eli said. "We'll have a well-rounded group for the council. And the other guard members already know him and trust him, so I think his presence on the council would make them more comfortable in working with us."

"Are there any objections to Felix joining Eli and Siobhan to complete our council for the first term?" Carlisle asked formally.

Silence followed.

"Well, Siobhan, Eli, and Felix, it looks like you're our first council," Carlisle said.

There was a brief round of applause, and the three of them moved to stand together near the center of the room. It seemed like there should be some sort of induction ceremony, but of course nothing had been planned for this unprecedented situation, so they got right down to business.

Siobhan spoke up first. "I think the first thing we need to do is to interview each of the remaining guard members, ensure none of them poses a threat to the new system, determine who will stay here, and send the rest on their way."

Eli and Felix agreed, and the three of them began to call the guard members forward, one at a time, to talk to each individually.

After the first few interviews, which were all fairly similar, the rest of us began to break into separate conversations.

"I have a question," Jake said to Carlisle, walking up to him.

"Yes, Jake?" Carlisle said.

"If your kind can poison us so easily with a single bite, why did most of them seem to be trying not to use their teeth against us?" he asked.

"Because you _stink_," Rosalie said, wrinkling her nose.

"Seriously," agreed Emmett. "It goes against our instincts to bite anything that smells that bad."

"The scent _is_ a deterrent," Carlisle confirmed, using a more diplomatic tone. "It's one of your body's natural defense mechanisms. Our teeth are always our best weapons, regardless of the species of our opponent, but to be completely honest, the thought of tasting you is quite repulsive."

"Besides that, some of the ones here today were practically newborns," added Jasper. "So their strongest instinct was to crush. I could tell they'd had some instruction, but they'd never practiced against one of your kind. You've had practice with both newborns and experienced fighters, so you were better prepared than they were."

"But didn't they know that our legends said your venom is lethal to us?" Jake asked. "I thought Aro had taken all of Edward's memories, and he knew about our legends before Aro touched him."

"Yes, Aro knew about it," said Edward. "But it doesn't surprise me that he apparently never shared that information with Caius or the others. He enjoyed collecting information for himself, but he didn't share everything he knew, not even with his closest companions."

Jake nodded, seeming satisfied with the explanation. Then he sat down, leaned back against the wall, and closed his eyes for a moment. Nessie stretched out on the floor, resting her head in his lap, and it suddenly struck me how excessively tired they both looked.

"Jake," Edward said, handing him a wad of cash. "Go find a hotel. You all need sleep. We'll call you in the morning, and we can finish up here then."

"We have to bury Quil," Jake protested, forcing his eyes back open.

"Tomorrow," Edward insisted. "Renesmee needs sleep too, and so do Mishna and Shua. You can give Quil a proper burial tomorrow, when you're all alert enough to function."

"Can you assure us that no one will touch the body?" Sam asked, walking over to us.

"You have my word," Edward assured him. "I will remain in this room until you return, and no one will touch Quil."

"Okay," Jake finally agreed. "But we can sleep just as well in the woods, and we can get there more quickly than finding a hotel." He tossed the wad of cash back at Edward, and he and Sam led all the pack members, along with Nessie, Mishna, and Shua, to the tunnel exit. Nessie and the other hybrids were so tired they could hardly stand. The adrenaline rush from the battle was over, and they were in desperate need of sleep – not to mention that Shua had just had surgery. Seth, who couldn't stand anyway due to his injuries, had already fallen asleep on the floor, and two of the others carried him out without waking him.

The rest of us continued waiting while the council spent a few minutes talking to each of the guard members. To my surprise, most decided to not only stay in Volterra but also to remain in the guard and assist the council. A few, including Renata, were unsure but said they wanted to remain in Volterra at least temporarily.

Only three guards expressed interest in going off on their own and trying out life as nomads. The council reviewed the reasons for the non-exposure rule with them and taught them the basic techniques for selecting inconspicuous humans and for hiding the remains of their prey. In the past, Heidi had always brought their victims to them, and they had never had to worry about burying the bodies. Tips for either avoiding or blending in with humans were explained to them, and they were permitted to leave.

After that, the council discussed logistical issues, such as where the council members would reside and whether they should convene on a regular basis.

Felix had started explaining the new technology that had been recently installed to help them monitor human communications for evidence of exposure, when his phone rang. I recognized the panicked voice on the other end as belonging to Ariana. She was ready to leave her station for the day but had been unable to reach Caius to give the required end-of-shift report. Felix assured her that no report was required that day and that she had permission to return to her quarters.

"This raises another question," said Felix as he pocketed his phone. "What is our policy on the humans that are employed here?"

"As far as I'm concerned, they can continue as before," said Eli. "They seem to serve as a barrier between the human public and what really goes on in this building, and that's probably a good thing."

"How many of them are there?" Siobhan asked.

"Only four at the moment," answered Felix. "There are three who work in shifts at the main desk, and then there is Gigi who sits at the tourism station, but she was never made aware of our true nature, so I don't think she counts. So there are really just three. We normally have more, but several were turned in the last few months – those newborns were among the first casualties in today's battle."

"Do you anticipate any problems with allowing them to remain in their current roles?" Siobhan asked Felix.

"No, I agree that they perform a necessary function," he said. "But I was wondering if we should introduce them to the new council. Do you want them to know that they have new bosses? Or should we try to give the appearance that nothing has changed, to make sure they'll go about their duties as before?"

"I think we should introduce ourselves," said Eli. "I don't think they'll give us any problems. The human we saw in the lobby was very eager to please, and she was a lot more comfortable talking to you than she was with talking to Caius."

Felix looked baffled. "What makes you say that?" he asked. "She was _comfortable_ talking to me?"

"Relatively speaking, of course," Eli said. "She witnessed Caius having her best friend for breakfast a few months ago, so she was less comfortable with him."

"What exactly is your talent, anyway?" Felix asked. "You judge comfort levels?"

Eli laughed. "No, I can scan others' thoughts and memories," he said.

"Like Aro," he said, clearly impressed.

"Not exactly, but there are similarities," he said. "I can hear from a distance but I can't take memories instantly like Aro could."

"And Ariana was relatively comfortable talking to me?" Felix asked again in disbelief.

"She thinks you're quite handsome, and she loves it when you wink at her," Eli said with a grin.

"I'll never understand humans," Felix said, rolling his eyes. "So, Siobhan, do you agree that we should tell the humans about our new council?"

"Yes, I agree," Siobhan said. "We want them to trust us, so we should be honest with them about who's in charge. And it won't hurt them to know that we disposed of their previous employers – it's best if they remain fearful of us."

"Their reactions should be entertaining," Eli said with a grin. "I think we should try to keep those same three around for a while so that we can avoid having to hunt for replacements. But we won't tell them that. Like you said, it's best if they're afraid of us."

"They all work here in hopes of being 'promoted,'" Felix said. "So if we're planning to leave them human, we should keep that quiet too."

"Agreed," said Siobhan.

"We can go introduce ourselves to them after we finish up here," Felix said, and the other two nodded in agreement.

"I think our next order of business is Jesse," Eli said.

"Yes, Jesse, could you come over her for a moment?" she asked, motioning for him to come forward.

"Would you like to tell us more about your power?" Eli asked.

"I assume you've already figured it out," Jesse said him. "But I don't suppose it matters anymore now, without the Volturi around."

"We all saw that you were able to steal Renata's shield," Eli said. "And I know that you were surprised that you were able to get it away from her. You didn't know before today that you could take others' talents?"

"I had known before that I was able to borrow some of Cora's ability when I was around her, but I couldn't control it very well, and I never realized I was taking it away from her at the same time – I thought I was sharing it. And I had noticed that things seemed to go well whenever I was around Fernando, but I wasn't sure if I was borrowing from him or if it was just that his good luck happened to benefit me when I was around him. I've always avoided other vampires as much as possible. I've had to fight to defend myself a couple of times, but I think those vampires must not have been talented because I never noticed anything then."

"So it was when the battle started that you began to realize what you could do?" Siobhan prompted.

"Right. I've never been involved in such a large fight before. When I started seeing red and my senses were heightened, I could see better how to manipulate my talent. Whenever I made eye contact with a talented vampire who was actively using his talent, I could see an ultraviolet ring sitting on top of their heads, kind of like a crown, and if I wanted to take it, I could will it onto my own head. But it took a great deal of concentration to keep it there. I tried it briefly with Kate, and was able to shock one of the guards, but that was when I noticed that she lost her ability when I borrowed it."

"So _that's_ what that flicker was," Kate said. "I was afraid I was losing my touch!"

"So I just waited for one of the talented Volturi to look at me so that I could take one of their talents," Jesse continued. "I didn't think that girl was ever going to look at me. I had been trying to get her attention, but there was so much going on that she hadn't noticed my efforts. Once she finally looked in my direction, it was easy. I just took her crown and I was invincible. I was pretty angry at that point, and I think that made it a little easier for me to hold onto it long enough for the others to get to her master."

"That's an incredibly powerful talent," Felix said. "You would have been highly honored in the guard."

"I don't think Aro would have let him live," Edward said. "He would have been too worried that it could be used against him."

"Well, I had no desire to serve the Volturi or to be captured by them, so it's good that I stayed away from them until now," Jesse said.

"I assume we can trust you not to abuse your power in the future?" Siobhan asked.

"It's really not very useful, except in the sort of situation we were just in," Jesse said. "And I suppose that if I ever get into an individual fight, I might make use of it then. Is that a problem?"

"No, no, of course not," Siobhan assured him. "We all have to defend ourselves from time to time with whatever means we have at our disposal."

"So if someone was fighting you, they would just need to avoid eye contact to keep you from taking their talent?" Felix asked. "Hypothetically speaking, of course."

"Right, I need eye contact," he answered. "But once I've taken a talent, I think I can keep it as long as I can maintain my concentration."

I suspected that this would become easier for him with time, as it had for me with my shield.

"Can you still do it, now that the battle is over?" Edward asked Jesse. "Go ahead, try to take mine."

A smile spread across Edward's face as Jesse's eyes scrunched shut and his hands flew to his ears as if trying to stop the sound.

"You did it!" Edward said.

"How do you live with that?" Jesse asked.

"It takes some getting used to," Eli told him. "I had to practice for a while before I could scan him without feeling overloaded from all the input."

"Try mine," I challenged. The thought that he might be successful was terrifying, but I felt compelled to find out if my shield was not as untouchable as we had thought. I looked him in the eye and waited, but I could still feel my shield firmly around my mind. Then I remembered what he said about needing to be actively using it, so I expanded the shield around some of those standing closest to me, but still, nothing happened.

"It's not working," Jesse said, sounding a bit frustrated. "It's like you don't have a talent, even though you obviously do."

I felt greatly relieved, even though I had no reason to believe that Jesse would ever use his talent against me. It was good to know that he couldn't see through my shield enough to see how to take it.

Jesse then experimented with a few other talents. He was able to take Zafrina's, but like with Edward's, it was too unwieldy for him without sufficient practice. He also took Eli's and was able to rummage through his memories a bit once Eli explained the index. Jesse seemed a little annoyed that Eli didn't mind and was even helping – I think he had hoped to pay him back for trying to pull his memories uninvited in the past.

The council eventually moved on to other topics, and discussions on how the council would operate continued on throughout the night. There were discussions on how to spread the word of the council's existence and how to ensure that all of our kind were able to participate in elections, and formal guidelines were created to help ensure balance and fairness in the biannual elections.

The next day, once those who slept woke up, we held a memorial service for Launhe and then waited while the wolves had their own private ceremony further off in the woods for Quil. It was not feasible to take him back to the U.S. due to the logistical difficulty of transporting his body in wolf form, so they decided to bury him there, outside of Volterra. Only Renesmee went with them, being considered a member of the tribe due to her marriage to Jake. I felt for Claire, and for Quil's mother, Joy, who would not get to say goodbye properly. At least Renesmee would be able to replay the service for them if they desired her to.

We had a long flight back home, but it felt much shorter than the one we had made days earlier when we weren't sure if we would be returning. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt truly worry-free. The Volturi were no longer after us.

When we landed in Boston, we found Charlie, Sue, and Renée all there waiting for us in the airport.

We had been expecting Charlie and Sue, as Seth had spoken to Sue on the phone before we left, but Renée's presence was a surprise. We were halfway down the escalator when we noticed her; she had been bent down digging something out of her purse, so we hadn't noticed her standing next to Charlie and Sue until it was too late to turn back. Renesmee was right in front, and not only was she not wearing her yellow contact lenses, but we didn't have any with us since we'd had no need of them in Italy.

"Nessie!" Renée exclaimed, extending her arms for a hug from the granddaughter she knew as her son-in-law's sister.

Nessie glanced up at us in panic, and Edward gestured for her to go on. It was too late to do anything else.

I knew from Renée's gasp the precise moment that she had noticed her brown eyes – the brown eyes that looked so much like mine used to, only prettier. They hugged briefly as Nessie told her it was good to see her again, and Renée didn't mention the eye color.

"Bella! Are you really ok?" Renée demanded as she ran up to me as soon as I stepped off the escalator. She threw her arms around me and hugged me as tightly as she could.

"I'm fine, Mom," I assured her.

"You're not hurt at all?" she persisted.

"No, not a scratch," I said.

She stepped back so that she could look me in the eye. "I heard about Quil and Seth," she whispered. "I was so worried that something had happened to you, too."

"No, they were the only ones," I said. She didn't need to know about Launhe and Shua. "And Seth is going to be okay."

"That's what Charlie said when he called me back, but I could hear the worry in his voice. I had to see you for myself," she said.

Seth gave Sue a lopsided grin as he made it to the bottom of the escalator and hobbled over to hug his mother. Tears dripped down Sue's face as she clung to him, and I could feel one of Renée's warm tears soaking into the fabric against my shoulder.

After a few moments, Renée stepped back as if to get a better look at me. "Bella, you're wearing the same clothes as when you left Florida," she whispered.

"Yeah," I said, glancing down at my rumpled attire. It was surprisingly clean and was not torn, but those hours spent on the plane had resulted in numerous wrinkles.

She gave me a rare look of motherly disapproval, and I just shrugged.

Sue was continuing to fuss over Seth, and I noticed Charlie watching Renée and me. It looked like he was trying to decide whether to interrupt us, and I realized I hadn't even greeted him yet.

"Dad!" I said, making my way over to him.

He pulled me into a hug, a lot tighter than usual, and whispered in my ear, "Sue told me what happened. Nearly gave me a heart attack. What were you thinking?"

"Sorry, Dad," I whispered back. I'm not sure exactly how much Sue told him, so I decide it's best not to elaborate.

"I can't believe you took Nessie into battle."

"She was safer with us. She didn't fight. We'll explain it all later if you really want to know."

"You really weren't hurt?"

"Not at all. I'm fine."

"Well, let's go get your luggage," he said aloud. "I'm sure you're all ready to get home."

"Um, there isn't any luggage," said Jake. "We were kind of in a hurry when we left."

"But Bella and Edward had several pieces when they left Florida," Renée said, confused.

"We left it at Carlisle's," I told her. "Several of us met there before we left for Europe. But we didn't take anything with us. We needed to travel lightly."

"Oh," she said, not seeming entirely satisfied with the explanation. "Well, you _are_ going home now, right?"

"I promised Carlisle I'd help him with something this evening, but you and Bella can go on back to the house, and I'll meet you there later," Edward said.

'_What?' _ I thought at him as I moved my shield aside. _'You're leaving me to deal with her alone? How am I going to explain Nessie's eyes? I have no idea what she's thinking!'_

He gave me a brief wink in acknowledgement.

"Could we stop and get something to eat on the way?" Renée asked me. "I'm starved."

"Why don't you come with us, Edward?" I suggested. "You can go to Carlisle's after we eat."

"I was just about to suggest the same thing," he said, giving me that crooked grin of his.

"Anyone else want to join us?" Renée asked.

"Sue wants to be with Seth, since he's having his surgery tonight, so we're going to follow Carlisle to the hospital," Charlie said. "We'll come over after he's out of recovery and spend the night at your house, Bella, if that's okay."

"Sure, Dad," I said.

After some discussion of who was going to ride in which car, we all headed out to the parking structure, and soon Edward and I were alone in our car with Renée. I had expected her questions to start as soon as we got into the car, but she was unusually quiet on the way to the restaurant.

That gave me more time to worry about what we were going to tell her. Part of me longed to tell her the truth, especially since such knowledge would no longer place her in danger of the Volturi. The new council had no problem with a few select humans being entrusted with the knowledge of our existence, and they had expressed no objections when we had specifically discussed with them the possibility that we might eventually want to tell Renée. But I worried about how she would react and how the knowledge might affect her.

It would not be easy for her to accept the idea of supernatural beings. We would probably have to provide a demonstration of strength and speed if we wanted to convince her of the truth. And then, what if she ended up being scared of me? What if she was repulsed by the fact that we drink blood? I knew that vampires had never been her favorite type of mythological character – I had a foggy memory of her rolling her eyes at the idea of watching a vampire movie, and although she was a voracious reader, I could not recall her ever reading any vampire books.

As we got closer to the restaurant, my worries increased. She was almost certainly going to confront us about Renesmee's eyes which were no longer yellow – we had blown our "secret agent" cover. What if she rejected Renesmee as her granddaughter, either due to her apparent age or just because of her not being fully human? What if the whole idea of supernatural beings roaming around was so distracting to her that she was unable to concentrate on her job, and she and Phil lost their house? What if she told Phil about us and he thought she was mentally ill and started giving her unnecessary medications?

There were just so many problems that could arise if we told her the truth, and my gut feeling was that she simply wasn't ready for it. Edward and I had discussed this some on the plane ride home, and we had agreed that we would wait and see how long it took her to grow suspicious of the secret agent story and that Edward would monitor her thoughts for indications that she might be ready for the truth. But I hadn't expected that we would need to deal with this as soon as we stepped off the plane! Things had been going so well! And would she be angry at us for having lied to her all these years?

These were just some of the disorganized thoughts that spun through my mind as we approached the restaurant. I suddenly realized that Edward must have had many of these same feelings that day in Port Angeles when I was telling him that I had figured out what he was. It had always seemed so silly to me that he had been worried I might run, but being confronted with the possibility of my mother learning the same thing about me somehow terrified me, and I understood better what he must have gone through.

As we pulled into the parking lot, my mind turned to the various ways we might be able to explain Nessie's eyes. Would she believe that they were brown contacts? Renée had gotten a good, close look at her, so that probably wasn't the best explanation. If we told her that Nessie had been wearing yellow contacts before, which was actually true, then we would be forced to come up with an explanation as to how my eyes – and Edward's and the others' – were so yellow without contacts. Maybe we could tell her that Nessie had undergone a special eye treatment to reverse the enhancements that were made to her eyes when she enrolled in the program. I hoped that Edward would do most of the explaining – being able to hear her thoughts gave him a definite advantage in this type of situation, and he could throw in some medical jargon to make it sound more believable.

Soon, we were seated at a table, and the questions started as soon as the waitress had taken our orders.

"Bella, why does Renesmee have your eyes?" she demanded angrily, getting right to the point.

"What?" I asked, genuinely confused. The way she said it did not sound like she suspected that I was Nessie's mother. She sounded like she had already come to some other conclusion of her own, and she very upset about something.

"She has your eyes!" Renée said through gritted teeth, emphasizing each word. "I recognize my own daughter's eyes when I see them. I've missed them these last several years. I just don't understand. Why would you give them away?"

"Give them away?" I repeated. She thought I literally gave her my eyes? "I still have my own eyes, Mom. They've just changed color."

"Well, then, how do you explain what I saw? Her eyes used to look like yours do now, except that I could always tell that she was wearing contacts. Now, they look like the ones you were born with, and she didn't have any contacts in today. Did you trade eyes with her or something? She's Edward's sister, so her eyes would have looked like his originally. It's starting to make sense now. But _why_?"

"Full eye transplants are beyond current medical science," Edward said. "There's no way to restore function to the optic nerve. Those are Renesmee's own eyes. She's been wearing the yellow contacts to blend in with us."

"Don't you lie to me!" Renée said, her anger rising. "I know you guys have your secrets, but I want an explanation on this one."

"Mom…," I began, and then sighed, unsure of how to finish.

Her eyes widened as she seemed to be making some sort of connection in her mind. "You know, I don't think you ever said exactly _what_ government it is that you're working for. You're not working for the U.S. government, are you?"

Edward's lips twitched up in amusement for a small fraction of a second, and I knew that Renée must be coming up with some new explanation that was nowhere close to the truth.

"No, Renée, it's not the U. S. government," Edward answered. "We allowed you to assume that because it was safer for you."

"Eye transplants may be beyond _human_ ability," Renée said, "but if you're working for an _alien_ government, they could have used alien technology to swap their eyes. You're not human, are you, Edward? You and all those adopted siblings whose eyes all match Carlisle's – _none_ of you are human! Am I right?"

Edward glanced at me questioningly. He wanted to know how I thought he should answer. She was far closer to the truth than I had suspected, and it scared me. I had no idea what to tell him, so I just shrugged.

"You're right. We're not human," he told Renée, apparently deciding to just go with it.

Renée gave a small gasp. I don't think she actually expected to hear her suspicions confirmed.

"So Carlisle has been making Bella more like your kind, and taking parts from her to make your sister more human?" Renée asked, aghast. "_Why_?"

Edward shook his head. "Renée, not even Carlisle can do a full eye transplant – I expect he could properly connect the blood vessels, which is something that is beyond current human ability, but the eye wouldn't work because of the optic nerve. I assure you, no body parts have been swapped."

"So why does Bella look more like you and the rest of the Cullens now?" she asked. "And why is your sister looking more like Bella, especially the eyes?"

"There's an easy explanation for Renesmee, but I'm not sure you're ready to hear it," Edward told her. "Keep thinking about it, and you might come up with it on your own."

Renée looked puzzled and just sat there for a moment, apparently trying to figure it out.

'_Are you thinking we might be able to tell her that Renesmee's her granddaughter?_" I thought at Edward, moving my shield aside briefly.

He looked up and then down – a "yes" – but also shrugged slightly. I guess he didn't want to get my hopes up too much, but I began to feel excited at the idea. Renée had apparently concluded that the Cullens were aliens from outer space, and she seemed to accept that idea much more easily than I ever would have expected. Maybe she could accept a ten-year-old adult granddaughter – who was only half human – as well?

Just then, the waitress came with our food. Renée took a huge bite of her burger, and I pretended to sip on my water.

I could tell from the look of concentration on Renée's face as she chewed that she was still trying to figure it out. I wondered what theories were running through her mind. When the waitress left, I decided it might help to give my mother a small hint.

"Renesmee isn't really Edward's sister," I told her.

She looked even more puzzled. "But she looks just like him," she protested.

"Yes, but they're not siblings," I said, deciding to give another hint. "She's not quite as old as she looks."

"And I'm a bit older than I look," added Edward.

Renée's eyes darted from Edward to me and back to Edward. She was starting to put two and two together. "What? You're her - ? But who's the - ? Bella?" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "She's your _daughter_?"

I nodded and could not keep the smile from my face. "Yes, mine and Edward's. You have a granddaughter."

Renée squealed in delight at this news. The other customers sitting in our area all turned and stared at us as they looked for the source and reason for the sudden, high-pitched noise.

"I'm a grandmother! I mean, I'm going to be a grandmother!" she told them, beaming, when she realized people were staring. I was glad that she had the presence of mind to say something that sounded somewhat normal. I was also glad that we were still in Boston, where no one knew us, rather than in Hanover where rumors of a pregnancy could quickly spread across campus.

Some of the people sitting nearest to us smiled and congratulated us, and a there was a smattering of applause. Then, thankfully, they went back to their meals and their own conversations.

After her initial reaction of excitement, Renée seemed to be overwhelmed with conflicting emotions, and she was understandably having trouble wrapping her mind around it all.

"I've always loved her, but I never understood why I felt so drawn to her," she said, tears forming in her eyes. "How could you keep this from me? I missed out on her childhood! Or was she never a child? Did you use your alien technology to create adult offspring?"

"No, her life began the old-fashioned way," I told her. "She just grew very quickly."

"Bella got pregnant on our honeymoon," Edward said. "Remember when you were told that she had contracted a rare disease, and no one was allowed to see her?"

"But Renesmee was never around when I visited. You hid her until she grew up?" Renée looked pained at what she had missed out on.

"Jake babysat for us whenever you came over."

"And they're married now," Renée said. "She's what? Ten years old? And she's married? Is this normal on your planet?"

"No, it's not," Edward said with a slight smile. "We'd never heard of a half-human hybrid before. Even Carlisle didn't know it could happen. I never dreamed I could father a child, and when the pregnancy was progressing so quickly, we were all very worried. She continued growing quickly after she was born, but the rate of growth slowed as she reached maturity. We introduced her to you right around the time she stopped growing, and I'm sure you remember that Jake and Nessie didn't begin dating until a few months after you met her. The two of them have always had a special connection. And while Bella and I weren't happy about their relationship at first, I have to admit that Jake has always had her best interest at heart. So, yes, having an adult daughter who's only ten years old is pretty strange. But there's never really been anything about my family that was normal."

"So that kind of explains Renesmee," said Renée, taking a deep breath. "But what about Bella? How was she changed to look more like a Cullen, and why?"

"When Renesmee was born, it was physically traumatic for Bella," Edward said. "She would not have survived if we hadn't changed her. She underwent a process that resequenced her DNA in order to make her physiology match ours. We're a bit more durable than you humans are."

"And you're really not human," Renée mused. It was still sinking in. "I guess that's the real reason why your skin always feels so cold?"

She reached out to touch Edward's arm, and he placed his hand palm-down on the table near her plate so that she would not need to lean across the table. She tentatively touched the back of his hand, apparently checking the temperature, and then rubbed her fingers back and forth so that she could feel the smoothness. Then she tapped the back of his hand gently with the tips of her fingernails, and there was a slight clinking sound, as though she were touching marble. She sucked in a breath at the sound.

"And you're like this too?" she said, looking at me with curiosity in her eyes. "More durable?"

I glanced around to make sure no one else was watching and positioned the end of my fork against the palm of my hand. Then I slowly pushed the fork forward so that the tines curled back and the handle bent.

Renée's eyes grew even larger, and she reached for the damaged utensil. I handed it to her and let her examine it, and when she was done, I quickly straightened it back out to its original shape.

"Are you okay with this, Mom?" I asked. "That I'm not human anymore?"

"Well, it certainly sounds much better than the alternative. I don't know, Bella; I'm still getting used to all of this. I just wish you'd told me earlier. You didn't trust me? Do you even work for the government at all? _Any_ government?"

"No, we don't," I said, deciding to be truthful where I could and hoping that she wouldn't be too angry about our earlier lies.

"Was the whole secret agent thing just a test to see if I could keep a secret?" she asked.

"No, it was more because we were afraid someone would kill you if they found out we'd told," I said, "and also because we just weren't sure you were ready to hear something like this. But it's much safer now."

"So it doesn't have to be as secret anymore? Is it okay if I tell Phil about this?"

"We'd prefer that you didn't," Edward said. "My people still have a non-exposure law. Humans aren't supposed to know we exist. The more people who know, the easier it is for things to get out of hand. If your government, or any of the world powers, became aware of us - well, let's just say that it could create a very dangerous situation."

"Ah, I see," she said. "So the government doesn't know you're here? I guess a full-scale war could be started if the wrong people found out, right? How many of your people are here, anyway?"

"I don't have a number," he said. "Not many. But you're right. A war would not be desirable for either species."

"But it's safe for me to know now? What changed?"

"The rule was recently modified to allow for situations such as this, and there are now different people in charge of enforcing it," Edward said. "It's best if we leave it at that."

"This has something to do with the mission you just got back from, doesn't it?" she asked. Sometimes she was too perceptive.

"I think it's best if we don't answer that question," I said.

"What about that story you told me about the 'renegade agent' who tried to kill you in Phoenix? Can you tell me what really happened then?"

"What we told you in St. Augustine was true," I said, "except that he wasn't any sort of government agent. He was one of Edward's kind, but not part of his family."

"But why did he go after you?" she persisted. "Was it because the 'non-exposure law' had been broken?"

"No, he wasn't in charge of enforcing that," Edward said. "There wasn't any real reason; it was just a game to him."

"So was he sent back to your planet?" she asked. "Is that why you couldn't tell me what happened to him when I asked earlier?"

"Mom, remember the fire at the ballet studio near your house?" I asked, wanting to avoid the topic of other planets. Although I was relieved that she was making that assumption so that I didn't have to tell her about vampires yet, I preferred not to lie or make up a story involving space travel.

"That was related to your attack?" she asked, beginning to put it all together.

"The one who attacked me died in that fire," I said.

Renée just looked at us for a moment. "You arranged that?" she finally asked Edward.

"I would have if my brothers hadn't beaten me to it," he said. "It was the only way to stop him."

Renée nodded, seeming to accept this.

"So Jasper and Emmett are really your brothers?" she asked.

"We're all adopted, but yes, we think of each other as brothers," he said.

"And Carlisle?" she asked.

"He and Esme are the only parents I have any real memory of," he said. "And speaking of Carlisle, I need to go ahead and leave now if I'm going to help him." He pushed his untouched food away slightly and glanced at me for any indication that I needed him to stay.

"We'll meet you at the house later," I said.

"What are you helping Carlisle with?" Renée asked.

"Seth's surgery. Seth isn't one of us, but his physiology is not exactly normal, so he can't go to a regular hospital. Carlisle will be doing it as his house, and he asked Rosalie and me to assist."

"You and Rosalie? Assisting with surgery?" Renée asked, confused.

"It's not something we normally do," he explained, "but this is an unusual circumstance, and we're the only ones who've had any medical training. Sue is a nurse, of course, but she doesn't have much surgical experience, and I don't think she'll want to watch what we're going to have to do."

"Is he in worse shape than what we were told?" she asked. "Charlie said it was just a broken leg. Is there something else wrong too?"

"No, it's just his leg, and it's a routine surgery," he said. "The bones just need to be rebroken and set properly. We wouldn't be in quite this much of a hurry to get it started except that Sue is here, and she has to leave tomorrow. If we complete the procedure tonight, she can be there with him when he wakes up and spend a few hours with him as he begins his recovery."

"Oh. Okay. Well, we'll see you later, then."

"I'll give you a call when I'm on my way home," he whispered into my ear. "You okay?"

'_Yes. I can't believe how well this went. You think she's really okay with this_?'

"She's still a bit confused, and it's a lot for her to take in, but I think she's going to be fine," he whispered back quickly with an encouraging wink. He then gave me a quick goodbye kiss and stood up to leave.

"Wait - don't we only have one car?" Renée asked.

"I'll take a cab to Carlisle's," Edward said. "It's just a few miles from here."

"But how will he get home?" Renée asked me as he left.

"He'll probably ride home from Carlisle's with Jake and Nessie," I said.

"But their car only seats two."

"They can squeeze in," I said. He could also run home, but there was no need to tell Renée that.

Renée glanced down at her plate and laughed. "I've only eaten one bite!" she said.

"Go ahead and eat," I told her. "There will be plenty of time for all of your questions."

She took another bite, and when she finished chewing, she looked up at me and asked, "You're not going to eat, are you?"

"We don't require human food at all," I told her. "We can swallow it, but it tastes awful, and it's not compatible with our digestive system." It felt good to tell her the truth about this; I wouldn't have to eat around her anymore.

"So why did you order it?" she asked.

"Just to seem normal," I said. "We try to blend in as much as we can. If people notice that we never eat, they may become too curious about us and start watching for other oddities. If people start to become suspicious that we aren't human, we have to move on to someplace new. We have to move every few years, anyway, since we don't age."

Renée stopped chewing. "You don't age?" she asked. "Do you mean that you age very slowly? Or you don't age at all?"

"Not at all," I answered. "How much longer do you think you would have believed our plastic surgery story?"

"I guess I'm pretty gullible sometimes," Renée said sheepishly. "But plastic surgery did seem to be the most logical explanation. So if you don't have plastic surgery, do you do something else to stay young? Is it some kind of procedure with alien technology? How does that work?"

"There's not a procedure," I said. "We just don't age. Once the genetic changes were complete, my body just stopped aging."

"So what planet is Edward from?"

I had been hoping to avoid such a direct question, but I thought of a way to answer without lying. "He was actually born as a human, like I was," I told her. "Carlisle changed him when he was about to die, like Edward did for me."

"And where was Carlisle from?" she persisted.

"Mom," I said, shaking my head. "I think it's best if we don't give you _too_ much information. You have a lot to process already."

Renée looked a little disappointed, but she seemed to understand. "Okay. I guess you still have to have some secrets. Just promise me that you won't lie to me anymore, all right? If I ask you something where you feel like you can't tell me the truth, you can just let me know that you can't discuss it, and I'll try to respect that. Will that work?"

"Yes, I think it will," I said, feeling very pleased with this agreement. Neither Edward nor I had told her that we were aliens or that his species was from another planet. I could just keep avoiding those types of questions, and later on, we might even tell her the whole truth. I could give her time to get used to the idea that we weren't human, and maybe she wouldn't freak out quite so much upon learning that there are vampires roaming her world – and that her daughter is one of them.

"Can you tell me more about your pregnancy?" she asked. "I so wish that I could have been there for you, honey."

"It's all kind of a blur now – a lot of my human memories are. I do remember the first time I felt her move," I said, smiling at the memory. "I called her my 'Little Nudger.'"

She smiled with me. "There's nothing like that first kick," she said.

"After that, things went really fast. She was born less than two weeks later."

"What?" She must have thought she heard me incorrectly.

"The entire pregnancy lasted less than a month. She was born less than two weeks after I felt the first kick."

"Was it otherwise like a normal pregnancy?" she asked, still seeming taken aback by this bit of information.

"I suppose so," I said. "I spent most of my time resting."

"I meant did it look like a normal pregnancy?" she clarified. "She grew in your stomach? Not someplace else?"

"Yes, that part was normal," I said, smiling at her imagination. "I probably looked like I was having twins, and I didn't look very healthy. We have some pictures I can show you sometime, but they're stored at Carlisle's house."

"And Edward said you had a traumatic delivery?" she asked with concern on her face.

"My placenta detached and I had a c-section. I don't remember much because I was fading in and out of consciousness."

"And where was she born? Was that when you were in Atlanta at the CDC? Or was that just a story you gave Charlie to explain why he couldn't see you?"

"It was just the cover story. As soon as we realized I was pregnant, we flew straight home from the island we had gone to for our honeymoon. She was born at Carlisle's house in Forks."

"So Carlisle did the delivery himself?" she asked. "Did Edward and Rosalie help with that too?"

"Actually, Carlisle was gone when the placenta detached. He had been planning to deliver her when he got back, but Edward ended up having to do it himself."

"_Edward_ performed a c-section on you?" she asked, amazed.

"I know it was really scary for him. He's been to medical school, but that was the first time he actually did surgery on anyone."

"Is that why he said your delivery was 'traumatic'? Did something go wrong with the surgery?" she asked.

"No, he didn't make any mistakes, if that's what you're asking," I said. "He knew exactly what he was doing. He just hadn't actually done it before."

"That boy amazes me more and more," she said. "Is there anything he _can't_ do?"

"I've often wondered the same thing," I said, smiling to myself.

"Is he planning to become a doctor, like Carlisle?"

"I don't think so," I said. "He'll never look any older than he does now, so we would be pushing it to tell people he was old enough to have completed medical school, and we wouldn't be able to stay anywhere very long because people would notice if their doctor still looked like a teenager when he was supposed to be more like twenty-six or twenty-seven. "

"But he's twenty-eight now, isn't he? You two are the same age, right?" Renée's brow wrinkled in confusion. This was really a lot for her to take in all at once. She wasn't fully grasping what it meant when I had told her we weren't aging.

"I was eighteen when I was changed ten years ago," I said. "I'll always look eighteen, no matter how long I live. Edward was seventeen when he was changed, but he's been seventeen for a long time - he went to medical school before I even met him. In the past, he's pretended to be as young as fourteen, and we think he could get away with twenty-five or maybe twenty-six."

"But you're both pretending to be twenty-eight right now, aren't you?"

"No, I enrolled at Dartmouth as an eighteen-year-old, and Edward enrolled a twenty-two-year-old. He'll be claiming twenty-five by the time I graduate. We'll probably have to move again as soon as I finish my degree. I don't think we ever told you we were a certain age; you already knew I was born twenty-eight years ago, and we let you assume Edward was my age since he was posing as being my age when we first met."

"Couldn't he work as a resident?" Renée asked. "He might look a little younger than the others, but not by that much."

"_I_ think he probably could," I said. "But he doesn't have enough confidence in himself. He's too worried that he might hurt someone accidentally."

"That sounds like Edward," Renée said, laughing. "He's always too hard on himself."

"Yes, he is," I agreed.

"Can we back up a minute?" she asked. "You still didn't tell me what went wrong. Edward said you wouldn't have survived without being changed to be like him, but you said the surgery went perfectly. Now, your delivery definitely sounded scary, but from what Edward said, and the look he had on his face when he said it, I was expecting it to be even worse than that. What am I missing? There's something you're not telling me, isn't there?"

"I also had some broken ribs," I admitted. "And I'm told my spine snapped, but I don't really remember that part. And I had to have CPR."

"What caused all of that?" Renée asked, the color draining from her face. She looked confused. Those were not normal complications from a detached placenta or a c-section.

"Renesmee is very strong – almost as strong as the rest of us. Once she reached a certain size, my human body was too weak for her normal movements inside the womb."

"Oh," she said, looking stunned. She was probably remembering the fork demonstration I had done for her earlier. "But she's half-human, right? In what ways is she human, besides the eyes?"

"Well, her digestive system can handle human food," I said. "And her circulatory system is more similar to that of humans. And her skin looks more human, even in the sunlight. And she sleeps."

"She sleeps?" Renée asked. There was a slight pause as she realized what that implied. "Do you mean that you don't?"

"No, our bodies don't require sleep. We're actually incapable of it."

"So you just pretend to sleep at night whenever I'm around?" she asked, looking confused again. "I've _seen_ Edward sleeping – he was sleeping the first time I met him, when you were in the hospital in Phoenix."

"He was faking it."

"If he was faking it, he's a really good actor. In the hospital, before you woke up the first time, I was sitting there reading a book for several hours, and he was asleep the whole time. Are you telling me he lay in that awful hospital recliner – the one that won't recline all the way and sits up when you try to lean back – and pretended to sleep for four or five hours?" she asked incredulously.

"That's right."

"So you're saying that you haven't slept in over ten years?"

"Yes."

"So what do you _do_ all night?"

I raised an eyebrow.

"Oh," she said, her face beginning to redden slightly. With an embarrassed smile, she picked up her glass and slowly drank the last of her water.

"Would you like go to the house now?" I suggested. "Renesmee will be home later this evening, and you can spend some time getting to know her better. She'll be so excited that you finally know you're her grandmother."

"Yes, I'm ready," she said, handing me some cash to cover her portion of the bill. "So she knows I'm her grandmother?"

"She calls you 'Grandma Renée,'" I said, slipping her money back into her purse without her notice.

"I like the sound of that," she said with a huge smile on her face.

On our way out, she excused herself to stop by the restroom, so I took the opportunity to give Nessie a call. I let her know that Renée had decided we were aliens and told her how much of the truth we had shared with her. She told me that her dad had arrived just a few minutes earlier and that they were working on Seth as we spoke. The surgery would not take long, so once Seth woke up they would head home, as she was extremely excited about Renée knowing their true relationship.

On our drive home, Renée asked more questions about the differences between us and humans, and I explained to her about our enhanced vision, hearing, and sense of smell. But mostly she was interested in hearing more about Renesmee and what she had been like when she was younger.

For the time being, her excitement at learning that Renesmee was her grandchild seemed to be outweighing the weirdness of learning that we weren't human. She had accepted the truth on that subject much more easily than I had anticipated. Of course, she had been observing our oddities for nearly ten years, and her current alien theory wasn't really that much more far-fetched than the secret agent story we had given her.

She seemed very flattered to learn that Renesmee's name was a combination of hers and Esme's. Edward had told her previously that his "sister" had been named after their grandmothers, Rena and Esther, and if she had ever noticed that the name was much closer to her own and Esme's, she had never said anything about it.

When we got to the house, I got out the pictures of Nessie's childhood and looked through them with Renée. I think I enjoyed the trip down memory lane almost as much as she did. Each picture had a story associated with it – some I could share with her, and some I could not. We had just finished the fifth album when I heard Jake's car turning onto our road.

Nessie was the first one in the door, and she immediately ran to hug Renée.

Edward sat down by me and we just watched as they hugged and cried.

"Do you think we should have told her sooner?" I murmured, feeling guilty for keeping them apart during Nessie's childhood.

"I don't think she was ready to hear it before today," Edward answered. "And too much knowledge would have been dangerous for her. Let's not second-guess ourselves."

I was surprised to hear him say that last part – it seemed uncharacteristically upbeat of him. I smiled up at him and saw that he was leaning down to whisper something with a serious look on his face.

"Ness is asking me if she can show Renée her talent," he whispered. "Are you okay with that?"

'_I guess so_,' I answered. '_You're the one who can hear her thoughts. What do you think? Is she still handling everything okay_?'

"She seems fine, but I wasn't sure how much you told her after you called Nessie."

'_I told her about our enhanced senses, and that we don't sleep or age,' _I thought at him. _ 'Mostly we talked about Renesmee. I didn't want to tell her too much without you around to monitor her real reactions.'_

"Renée, there's something I think Nessie would like to share with you," Edward said. "She has a special ability that none of the rest of us has."

"May I show you?" Renesmee asked.

"Of course!" Renée said, looking at her expectantly.

Renesmee gently touched the palm of her hand to the side of Renée's face, and Renée got the same amazed look on her face that everyone gets the first time they experience my daughter's gift.

'_What did she show her?_' I asked.

"The first time they met," Edward whispered.

"That's amazing!" Renée exclaimed. "How did you do that?"

"We don't know how it works," Nessie said. "But I've been doing it since before I could talk."

"Where's Jake?" I asked aloud, suddenly realizing he had never come in. Had he gone for a run in the woods? I didn't even remember hearing him when they got out of the car.

"He decided to stay and keep Seth company," Nessie answered. "He wanted to give me some time alone with Grandma Renée, and he was really tired, too. He fell asleep on the couch a few minutes before I left."

"How is Seth?" Renée asked, looking over at Edward and me. "Did the surgery go okay?"

"It went perfectly," Edward answered. "We left shortly after he woke up. He'll be on crutches for a while, but he should be back to normal soon."

"That's great!" Renée said, but she had already turned her attention back to Renesmee. She just couldn't stop looking at her granddaughter.

Nessie noticed the stack of albums and picked up where I had left off, showing her the rest of the pictures.

Renée looked sad when they came to the wedding pictures. "I almost went to your wedding, you know. I was so flattered that you invited me, and I really wanted to be there, but then I found out Phil's brother was coming in that weekend, and I felt like I needed to be at home. I had no idea that I was missing my only granddaughter's wedding! I'm so sorry I wasn't there."

"It's okay," Renesmee reassured her. "I knew you probably wouldn't be able to attend. Most people wouldn't travel across the country just to see their son-in-law's sister get married. We actually thought about telling you then, but it just seemed too dangerous."

When they had finished the last album, which included pictures of their recent trip to Rio, Renée asked hopefully, "Do you have any videos?"

We all laughed – we had an overabundance of videos. It had been a running joke when Nessie was still growing that she was spending half of her life in front of the camera. We had intended to create some edited copies with fake date stamps to make it look like she had aged at a normal pace, but we had never gotten around to it.

However, as I tried to think of which ones would be good to show Renée, I realized that very few of them were appropriate unless we wanted to explain a lot more details. Those videos included vampire arm wrestling matches and snowball fights, Jake phasing into a wolf, Nessie biting Jake and watching the blood trickle out, Nessie reciting an entire Shakespearian play from memory at age two, Emmett's practical joke with the grizzly bear carcass, Rosalie and Emmett making out on top of said carcass, Nessie with her bottle of donated human blood, Nessie jumping across the river in a single bound, Nessie with her first "vegetarian" kill – no, those videos definitely weren't appropriate for Renée.

"How about my wedding video?" Renesmee asked. Her tone of voice indicated she was talking to Renée, but she looked up at Edward and me as she said it, asking if it was okay.

"I think that's a good choice," I said. There had been humans present at the wedding, and everyone had been on their best behavior. It was probably the only one we had that _was_ appropriate for Renée.

Nessie jumped up to get it, not bothering to move at human speed.

"What just happened?" Renée asked, looking bewildered. Nessie was sitting next to her again, pressing the "play" button on the remote. "Did I really just see you move that fast?"

"Sorry!" Nessie said, cringing slightly at her lapse. "I guess they hadn't told you about our speed yet. I probably wasn't supposed to do that."

"It's okay, Ness," Edward told her. "We've been telling her about our true nature. We're just trying not to overwhelm her too much all at once."

"So you can _all_ do that?" Renée asked.

"Yes," Edward confirmed. "That wasn't even full speed."

"That's how you were always able to catch Bella when she would start to trip, wasn't it?" she asked.

Edward didn't even try to suppress his laughter, and I was once again glad that I could no longer blush.

"I want to see," she said.

"You want to see Mom trip?" Nessie asked with a grin. "I'd like to see that too."

"No, I want to see her and Edward do what you just did," she said.

We moved around in the room a bit, darting from one side to the other a few times. It wasn't full speed – there wasn't room for that in such a confined space – but it was enough to show Renée that we really could move inhumanly fast.

"You're really taking all of this much better than we anticipated," observed Edward. "You don't seem frightened at all."

"Thanks," said Renée. "It's not frightening - it's just really amazing! Is there anything else I should know that you haven't told me yet? I don't even know what to ask. What else can you do?"

"There is one thing you'd probably want to know that you're not likely to notice on your own," Edward said. "Nessie isn't the only one with a unique ability. I have a special skill as well."

I was surprised that he had brought up this topic. I felt a little alarmed at the thought of her learning about it, but I knew it was probably for the best.

"Really? What is it?" Renée asked, obviously very curious.

"I can hear thoughts," he told her.

I hadn't quite expected him to just put it out there like that.

Renée laughed. "You're joking, right? What am I thinking right now?"

"You're thinking about Renesmee and how fortunate you are to have her for a granddaughter."

"That was too easy. What am I thinking now?"

"You're thinking of inviting her to visit with you in Florida during Spring Break."

"That was too easy, too," she protested. "You could have guessed that."

"Think of something only you would know," Edward suggested. "Think of something from your past that you've never even mentioned to Bella."

"Okay, got it," she said.

"You were remembering your first cat, which you named Sassy. You got him when you were two, and you felt frustrated when everyone called him 'Sassy' because you had been trying to say 'Tabby.'"

Renée's mouth had dropped open as soon as he said the word 'cat,' and her eyes grew larger and larger as he continued.

"You mean you've been listening to my thoughts this whole time?" she asked, clearly uncomfortable with the idea.

"I'm afraid so," he said. "I needed to know how you were reacting to all of this. And it's not something I have much control over – I can't completely turn it off."

"You know those dreams where you walk into the classroom, and you suddenly realize that you forgot to wear any clothes?" she said. "That's how I feel right about now."

"I'm sorry," Edward said, looking regretful. "Perhaps I shouldn't have told you. I've just made you uncomfortable."

"No, I'm glad you did," she said. "Not telling me would have been worse. It's just embarrassing - I know I have strange thoughts sometimes. You must think I'm crazy."

"On the contrary," he said. "I find your mind to be insightful and upbeat."

Renée made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a snort, and we all laughed. After a moment, she began to look alarmed. "What about when you were pretending to sleep in Phoenix, in Bella's hospital room? Were you listening then, too?"

"I don't recall anything that you should be embarrassed about. I read your book with you, and other than that, I didn't pay much attention except when you were thinking about Bella."

"And when I was staring at you while you pretended to sleep?" she asked, burying her head in her hands.

"Everyone stares when they first meet us," he said dismissively. "You just had more opportunity than most due to the circumstances. I wasn't listening to you the whole time. I was also sifting through the thoughts of the doctors, nurses, and lab technicians, trying to get updates on Bella. I could hear anyone in the hospital, or the buildings next to it, for that matter."

"Bella, this doesn't bother you?"she asked, turning to me. "You were always such a private person. You've known about this all along?"

"Actually, he can't hear my thoughts," I said, feeling a little guilty about my powers of privacy. "I seem to have some sort of barrier around my mind, and he can't hear through it unless I let him. I can shield you too. I didn't at first because we needed to know how you were really reacting to all of this."

"Please do that," she said.

"I'm doing it now," I told her, having extended my shield to cover both her and Nessie.

"I didn't feel anything," she said. She turned to Edward. "So you aren't hearing me anymore?"

"Nope. Perfect silence," he said happily.

"So is that weird for you?" she asked him. "Do you miss it when she blocks you?"

"Not really," he said. "It's made me realize how much I've always depended on people's thoughts to know how to respond to them. But mostly it's a relief to hear only my own thoughts for a change. Think about what you experienced when Nessie shared her memories with you, and then imagine getting that from everyone in the room at once and never being able to turn it off."

"That _would_ be awful," she said, her brow wrinkling in sympathy. "How do you deal with it?"

"I'm used to it," he said with a slight shrug. "It's always been that way for me. I usually try to tune out the noise as best as I can, but there are times when it's useful. For instance, I'm able to alert my family if humans become suspicious of us or when they begin to notice that we aren't aging. And it was useful today with Seth's surgery. I was in charge of monitoring his anesthesia because I can tell exactly how he's responding to it."

"And why was it that Seth couldn't go to a regular hospital?" she asked. "Are the Quileutes from another planet too?"

"The Quileutes are human," I told her, "but some of them, like Seth and Jake, have some genetic differences that they don't want everyone to know about, so they go to Carlisle when they need medical care."

"Their physiology is different enough that we can't go by normal human dosage for anesthesia or other medications," Edward added. "Even if they weren't worried about being discovered, it could be dangerous for them to go to a regular doctor, because the normal rules don't always apply to them."

That seemed to satisfy her curiosity about the Quileutes, and she seemed comfortable again once I had assured her she was shielded. I would have to unshield her occasionally so that Edward could monitor her reactions, but I decided it shouldn't hurt to give her some privacy for most of what remained of this visit.

"What does Charlie know about all of this?" she asked suddenly. "Does he still think you're government agents? Does he know he has a granddaughter?"

"He knows the truth," I admitted. "He kind of figured it out on his own because Jake invited him over when Nessie was a newborn. We tried to pass her off as Edward's niece, but it didn't work. Her eyes made it pretty obvious. And he had learned some of the Quileutes' secrets because of his friendship with Jake, Billy, and Sue. So he's known all along that Renesmee was our daughter, and he's known that there was something very odd going on, but he didn't want to know the details until just recently. He only learned that we aren't human a few months ago, right before we left for college, and that was only because Billy had let it slip accidentally."

Renée bit her lip, and I could tell she was trying not to cry. I didn't need to be a mind reader to know that she was thinking about how unfair it was that Charlie had gotten to see Renesmee grow up, while we had kept Nessie's existence a secret from her all those years.

"I'm sorry, Mom," I said, moving to sit next to her and pulling her close. "We just wanted to keep you safe. Dad had some protection because of his connection to the Quileutes, but you would have been in real danger."

"I know," she said. "I understand that. I do. It still hurts, but I can see why you didn't invite me over as soon as she was born and say, 'Here's your granddaughter. She's not human, and neither are we. You need to watch out for assassins now.'" She gave a little chuckle. "I just feel like I need to make up for so much lost time, and I have to go home tomorrow."

She soon went back to talking to Renesmee – she still had a lot more questions for her. She wanted to hear about everything she had missed, and Renesmee was more than happy to share everything with her, both verbally and otherwise. They ended up staying awake most of the night talking, both of them eventually falling asleep sitting up.

I scooped up Renesmee to carry her upstairs to her own bed, and she threw her arm around me the way she used to when I would carry her to bed when she was little. I felt a twinge of sadness that those days had passed so quickly, but I had a perfect memory of every one of them, and she had grown into such a beautiful young lady. I stood there watching her for just a moment after laying her on her bed. She shifted restlessly and threw her arm across the left side of the bed. She was missing Jake, somehow realizing even in her sleep that he was not there next to her.

"Do you think Renée would be more comfortable in a bed too?" Edward asked as I returned to the family room. "I wasn't sure if I should move her."

"She's always been a light sleeper," I said. "I'm afraid she'd wake up. We're going to have to wake her up in three hours if she's going to make it to the airport on time, so I'm thinking we shouldn't disturb her so she can get as much sleep as possible."

Just then, Renée groaned, and then she mumbled, "…don't have enough beds…"

"What's she dreaming?" I asked.

"You still have her shielded," Edward said with a grin. "That's also why I was having trouble deciding if she was sleeping deeply enough for us to move her."

"Oh! I forgot," I said, letting my shield return to normal. It seemed to be getting easier and easier for me to keep it in place without devoting a great deal of concentration.

"She's dreaming there are flying saucers releasing hordes of grandchildren into her back yard," he said. "She's worried about where they'll sleep and who will feed them all."

"I wonder how many nightmares she'll have because of what we've told her," I said.

"I'm not sure I'd call it a nightmare," he said, lowering his voice even more after Renée mumbled something unintelligible. "It's just a strange dream. I think she was being honest when she told us that she didn't find any of this scary – just fascinating."

"It must be interesting to watch people's dreams," I said.

"Not really," he said. "Most are disjointed and don't make much sense. But I would have loved to have seen the dreams you had when you were human. You said my name at least once every night, and I spent many nights imagining what you might have been dreaming about me."

"I don't think you would have liked them very much," I said. "At least not at the time."

"It's not fair," he complained in a teasing voice. "You're finally able to let me hear your thoughts, and now you can't sleep anymore!"

'_I could try to recall some of them for you_,' I thought, moving my shield away. '_I may not remember a lot of detail, but I'm sure I could fill it in._'

"Not now!" he said, trying to give me an exasperated look even though he was smiling in spite of himself. "My control does have its limits. Your _mother_ is in here!"

'_I'll try to behave myself,_' I thought as I sat down next to him. "It sure feels good to be home, doesn't it?" I added aloud, forcing my thoughts to another subject.

"Most definitely," he answered.

"I didn't think we would be coming back," I confessed. "I think I'm still sort of in shock that we fought that battle and won."

I was immediately hit with a pang of guilt as I remembered the two who _didn't_ come back. My own family somehow made it through the battle unscathed, but two of our friends had made the ultimate sacrifice. My heart went out to Claire as I thought of how devastated she would be when she learned of Quil's death. Sue would be delivering the news when she returned home.

"Claire will be lost without Quil at first," Edward said, responding to my thoughts. "But she's human, and still a child; human children are remarkably resilient. It won't be easy, but I'm sure she'll get through this."

"Human children are capable of some pretty strong feelings," I reminded him. "I guess it would be even worse for her if this had happened when she was older and they had developed a romantic relationship, but she had a pretty strong attachment to him already. You know how inseparable they were, just like Nessie and Jake."

"Leaving Claire behind was his only regret," Edward said. "And it wasn't a selfish concern of not getting to see her grow up and become his wife, but a pure concern for her well-being and safety. That part of the imprinting process still amazes me, even after what I've seen with Jake."

"Quil was one of the ones I met before they started phasing. He and Embry were Jake's best friends even before they all joined the pack. This is going to be really hard for Jake, too."

"Yes, it's hitting him pretty hard," Edward said. "But the tribe considers Quil to be the ultimate hero. He'll go down in their legends as the one who ventured into the heart of enemy territory and killed four of the enemy after being mortally wounded. And Quil considered that he died fulfilling his purpose in life, and the other wolves see it that way too. For his people, there is no death more honorable than that."

I hoped that the honor in his death would somehow be of more comfort to Claire and to Quil's mother than it was to me.

My thoughts turned suddenly to Launhe. I never knew her very well, and I felt guilty that I didn't feel the same sense of loss for her death that I did for Quil's. But still, I hated that she had died fighting our battle. Had we taken advantage of the dislike we knew she and her sisters had for the Volturi when we asked them to accompany us to Volterra?

"It wasn't just our battle," Edward said, responding to my thoughts again. "Launhe and her sisters had been waiting for an opportunity like this. Personally, I think their father deserved his death sentence, but they were fiercely loyal to him in spite of what he had done to their mothers. They were all very eager to go with us, and they were fully aware of the risks. If they hadn't gone with us, they might have launched their own attack eventually. Or Aro's curiosity could have led to their abduction so that he could study them."

"I always worried that Aro might take Renesmee for that reason," I said.

"That thought did cross Aro's mind when he was considering how to respond to us at the confrontation ten years ago," Edward admitted. "It was just a fleeting thought, a plan he considered too risky, so I never mentioned it. But there would have been less risk for him to try it with Nahuel's sisters, since they lived in such a remote area and didn't have us close by to protect them. Launhe's death is regrettable, but you are _not_ to blame for it, and we don't know that she would have continued to be safe if we hadn't asked them to meet us there."

I knew Edward was right. While even two casualties seemed like too many, we didn't know what might have happened differently if we hadn't taken our friends with us to Volterra. If we had avoided the fight, Caius might have sent the guard after us or the others, catching us by surprise and resulting in even more deaths. And if we hadn't taken our friends with us, we would have faced impossible odds. Without Eli, Marcus probably wouldn't have destroyed Aro for us, and without Jesse, we couldn't have gotten through Renata's shield. Without Quil and Launhe and the others helping eliminate and distract our opponents, we might have lost the battle. And if we had lost and the hybrid sisters had survived by staying at home, there was a still high probability that the Volturi would have pursued them eventually.

"You're right," I said aloud. "Things could have turned out a lot worse."

Edward's phone rang just then, and he answered it quickly enough that Renée never stirred at the noise. It was Jake, calling us rather than Renesmee since he knew she'd likely still be asleep. He was dropping Charlie and Sue off at the airport – their flight was leaving a few hours earlier than Renée's – and he planned to spend the rest of the day at the Cullens' with Seth before returning home. He would be bringing Seth to stay with us for a few days, until his leg was fully healed. Carlisle wanted to examine it again before he tried phasing, so it would be simpler for him to stay here for a few days rather than flying back shortly after getting home to La Push.

Edward then spoke to Carlisle for a few minutes. I could hear the excitement and fascination in Carlisle's voice as he discussed the details of the surgery and the knowledge they had gained on both wolf and vampire/human hybrid physiology over the last few days. It occurred to me that Edward was the only one he could truly share this with. Rosalie was not really interested despite her medical training, which she had done purely to please Carlisle, and none of the rest of us would have fully understood what he was talking about.

"Now where were we?" Edward asked as he finally put the phone back in his pocket.

"I believe we were trying to distract ourselves from each other," I said, marveling at how I found him even more physically alluring than normal – something I hadn't thought possible – due to having had no time alone with him for several days in a row.

"Yes. So we were," he said. My thoughts must have been affecting him, because he ran his thumb across my lower lip and then leaned in to kiss me.

"Renée," I reminded him, breaking away from the kiss after a few seconds. I allowed my shield to retract back to its normal position, realizing that I had been distracting him with my thoughts.

"I know," he said with a sigh. Then his eyes brightened with a bit of hope. "We could go out into the woods."

As tempting as that was, I worried that Renée would awaken while we were gone, or that we would lose track of time and cause her to miss her flight.

"Let's just talk some more," I suggested. "We'll have the house to ourselves in a couple of hours, and then I won't be worrying about Renée waking up too soon or oversleeping."

"Okay," he agreed. "What do you want to talk about?"

I thought for a moment, and then a question I'd had earlier occurred to me. "Why didn't the Romanians fight back when Cora and the others attacked them? Did they _want_ us to kill them?"

"They truly didn't care," he said. "Their mates died long ago in the battle with the Volturi , and they had been focused on getting revenge for the last several centuries. Now that their enemies are destroyed, they don't really have much left to live for, no goals left to achieve. They weren't trying to provoke us, but they didn't care if they upset us. So they weren't seeking death, but as you saw, they weren't going to fight against it either."

"Did you hear anything about their failed plans that they didn't say out loud?" I asked. "I wonder how they knew to show up in Volterra right after the battle."

"I did hear quite a bit more in their thoughts," he said. "Nicholai was an original member of their coven, but he had erased himself from the memories of the guard members who knew of him, so Aro – and the rest of the world - thought that only Vladimir and Stefan had survived. The three of them had been spying on the Volturi for centuries. At first they used Nicholai's gift as a defense against anyone who noticed them near Volterra, but after they lost him, they had to be more careful. The tunnels that Cora, Fernando, and Jesse remembered were the ones the Romanians had used in their spying activities. If Demetri had decided to 'look' for them while they were in Volterra, they would have been in trouble."

"And you didn't hear anything in their thoughts about any of this when they visited us at Forks?" I asked.

"No. To be honest, I wasn't paying them a great deal of attention then. What I did hear was nothing unusual or unexpected. They were just hopeful of seeing the Volturi defeated, whatever the circumstances might be."

"So they were spying on the Volturi while Carlisle was living with them?"

"Yes, they were. I heard them remembering when Carlisle parted ways with the Volturi, and they had realized that he was in a unique position to be able to challenge them eventually. Carlisle had gained the Volturi's trust and respect, but his concern for human lives had prevented him from becoming one of them. The Romanians observed that the Volturi's attempts to 'cure' him actually left him at odds with them, and yet the Volturi still trusted him."

"It's amazing that they had such an elaborate plan for so many centuries - and that it almost worked," I said. "It still makes me angry to think how they tried to manipulate Carlisle."

"Carlisle doesn't see it that way, you know," he said. "They may have created Alice, but they never caused any of us to do anything that was against our own will. And none of us regret that Alice has become part of our family, and she doesn't regret it either. She feels like it was all meant to be, and Carlisle feels much the same."

"Thank you for holding me back when I almost helped attack them," I said. "It just made so angry when I thought about what they did to Alice and how they could have messed up our lives. I don't know how you had so much control."

"I didn't - not really," Edward admitted. "I was angry too, but I could hear Carlisle's thoughts begging me – and trusting me - to help him hold everyone back. He was worried about what the rest of our world would think if they heard that the Cullens had destroyed the Volturi and the Romanians in the same day. And he was sickened by the number of deaths that had already taken place. There was a big part of me that wanted to ignore him, and for a split second, I almost did, but then I saw you ready to attack, and I just couldn't let you do it."

"Why not?" I asked, confused.

"Bella, you've never killed anyone," he said. "You don't know what it's like to have that on your conscience. Please don't be angry. I know it probably seems like I was being controlling again, but I wanted to spare you that one thing if I could."

I wasn't quite sure how I felt about that. I knew he meant well, but he _was_ being controlling.

"You did just thank me for stopping you," he reminded me gently. "Why did you thank me?"

"Because I can see in hindsight that Carlisle was right," I said. "Killing them wouldn't have accomplished anything, and it could have caused us new problems down the road."

"And?" he prompted.

"And it would have been wrong," I admitted, thinking that it felt like he was reading my mind even though I was still shielded. "I guess there wasn't much time for you to reason with me, huh?"

"No, there wasn't," he said.

"Edward, I can't promise you I'll never kill anyone," I told him. "You may not always be there to stop me, and there may be times when I don't _want_ you to stop me. Will you be okay with that? Would you think less of me if that happened?"

"We never know what will happen in the future," he said. "There may be a time when it's necessary. And if that time comes, I will be behind you one hundred percent. And regardless, I would never think less of you. But until that time comes, I hope you won't hold it against me if I do my best to spare you the knowledge of what it feels like to be a murderer. Aside from Marcus, the times I've killed fellow immortals were all in defense of myself and my family, but I still carry with me the knowledge that I've destroyed sentient beings. Even when it's necessary and justified, it's just not a good feeling."

"You know _I_ don't think less of you, don't you?" I asked, moving my shield aside as I looked into his eyes for any sign that he might doubt me. "The fact that you dislike the feeling you get when you've killed someone – even someone like Victoria who was trying to kill us or others - proves that you're nothing like them."

"I do know that," he said. "And hearing the conviction in your thoughts as you said it means a lot to me. So – do you forgive me?"

"Nothing to forgive," I said. "I'm not upset. I promise."

He smiled, hearing the sincerity behind my words.

"So what else do you want to talk about?" he asked.

I moved my shield back into place and focused on thinking of some additional topics.

We managed to fill the next couple of hours with conversation, and finally it was time to wake up Renée and Renesmee.

Renée nearly had a panic attack when she realized how little time she had before her flight was scheduled to leave, but Nessie assured her they'd make it on time.

"Just don't tell Grandpa Charlie how fast I drive," she had told her.

Renée had laughed at this. She had never been one to worry much about speed limits, but I was certain she had never exceeded them as much as she was about to. But based on her reactions so far, Edward and I had decided that she would be okay with it and would probably even find it exciting, so we had let them sleep as long as possible.

They rushed around for a few minutes getting ready and then left for the airport in the Vanquish.

It felt unnaturally quiet in the house once they had driven away. Edward and I were truly alone for the first time in several days.

It had been torture to keep our hands off each other on the flight home from Italy. We had tried to content ourselves with holding hands or leaning on each other's shoulders while pretending to sleep. We had taken the first available flight home, and it was packed with humans who seemed determined to stare at our inhumanly beautiful family, so we'd had to behave ourselves.

When Renée had shown up unexpectedly, I had been distracted with my worries of what we were going to tell her and how she might react, but when she had started her late night "slumber party" with Renesmee, I had found myself focusing once again on the perfection of Edward's face, the masculine curvature of his jaw line, and the way his arm muscles flexed as he shifted in his seat to avoid appearing inhumanly still. Once, while Renée and Renesmee were deep in their own conversation, I had even moved my shield aside, showing Edward how I wanted to be in his arms, how I longed to kiss every perfect feature of his face, how much I was looking forward to being alone with him. He had hissed under his breath; Renée hadn't noticed, but Nessie had shot us an annoyed glance.

We had managed to control ourselves while the two of them slept, but now that they were gone, control was the furthest thing from my mind.

So when he turned around after closing the door, I immediately captured his mouth. He picked me up, one arm behind my knees and the other around my back, and carried me over to the couch without breaking our kiss.

Then I shrieked in surprise when he unceremoniously dropped me there. There was a loud crack as some unseen part of the couch gave way, and we both laughed as he stepped back to assess the damage. After all, Nessie wouldn't be gone long.

"Not noticeable," he murmured, kissing me again.

He straddled me on the couch and smiled down at me. I reached up and moved his hair out of his eyes and tried to pull him closer, but he held back, playfully peppering my face with kisses as he hovered over me, not allowing me to reciprocate. He was teasing me, and I would pay him back later.

I loved seeing him in such a good mood – it reminded me of our time in Chicago, before we had learned of Renesmee's first communication from Aro.

So for a few moments, I played along. Then, when I couldn't stand it any longer, I moved my shield aside and imagined what I _really_ wanted him to do. He immediately complied, crushing his body to mine and once again kissing me without restraint, and we spent the next several hours there on the couch.

Too soon, it was time for Renesmee be getting home. We inspected the damage to the furniture more closely and replaced a wooden support, then sat snuggled next to each other while we waited for our daughter's return.

"Happy New Year," Edward said with a grin.

I looked up at him, surprised, and realized that although I was aware it was Sunday, I really hadn't been paying attention to the calendar for the last several days. Of course. Today was the first day of January. "We didn't even watch the ball drop," I said. "Did Renée wonder why we didn't mention it?"

"No, she was too distracted," he said with a chuckle. "It hadn't occurred to me either until I heard it in Nessie's thoughts, but she decided not to say anything because she was more interested in what she and Renée were talking about."

"So our classes start back tomorrow," I said. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had known this, but I had been too preoccupied with everything else that was going on to give it any consideration.

"Are you ready to go back?" he asked.

It was a good question. We had probably just set a new world's record for the most eventful winter break ever. In the past three weeks, I had been to Biloxi, Denali, Forks, Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Egypt, and Italy. Oh yeah, and we had toppled a government that had been in place for about two millennia. Was I ready to go sit in a classroom? The idea was strangely appealing and comforting, in a familiar sort of way. A return to normalcy would be welcomed.

"Yes, I think I am," I said. "How about you?"

"Yes, it will be good to get back to normal," he said. "And some of my classes this semester should have some new material, so that will be good."

"At least you won't have to teach that lab again," I said.

"Actually, I told them I'd do it again if they couldn't find anyone else," he said sheepishly.

"And they haven't found anyone else?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I got an email yesterday confirming that they need me again."

"I thought you hated it," I said, confused as to why he would have volunteered again.

"The first few weeks were rather unpleasant," he said. "But I think I enjoyed the challenge of getting them to pay attention to their work, and by the end of the quarter I could see that they had made a lot of progress. At least it was something different. When I talked to Eli about it, he seemed to think it sounded like fun, and he gave me some ideas that I may want to try next time."

"What will we tell people about Eli?" I asked, suddenly realizing that he would be missed this quarter. "People will definitely notice when he doesn't return after the break, and a lot of students know that you and he were good friends."

"It's probably best to give them some version of the truth," he said. "We could tell them that he got married and moved away, or that he received a job opportunity in Europe that he couldn't pass up."

"Let's go with the job opportunity," I suggested. "I know a lot of girls who would be devastated to learn he got married."

"Job opportunity it is," he agreed.

"This means I'll have to find a new partner in chemistry lab, too," I said. "I'll have to be a lot more careful in lab this quarter since I'll be paired with a human this time."

"You'll do fine, love. I have complete confidence in you," he said.

"I wonder how Chloe's doing," I said. "You haven't heard anything else about her mom?"

"No, I haven't heard anything. But I wouldn't be surprised if Chloe has decided to stay with her mother. She had considered not coming back after Thanksgiving, but her mother urged her to finish out the semester."

"Does Nessie know about that?" I asked.

"No, I hadn't mentioned anything. I didn't want to upset her even more when we really don't know what will happen," he said.

"That's probably best," I agreed, looking at the clock and wondering when our daughter would be home. It would be nice to have a day with just the three of us. I wondered if Jake had sensed that she needed some time with her parents after what we'd just been through, or if he was really just waiting for Seth to be ready to travel. I decided it was probably a combination of both.

"Bella, there's one more thing I wanted to tell you before Nessie gets home," Edward said. "I was going to tell you earlier, but our conversation somehow went in a different direction. It's about the Romanians – there's a bit more that they didn't tell us out loud. It was the part that almost made me lose control."

"What was it?" I asked, wondering what could be worse than what I had already heard them say.

"I haven't told Carlisle yet, and I'm not sure that I will," he said. "I'm only telling you because of my promise not to hide things from you. It seems that Alice was not their only successful addition to Carlisle's coven."

"What?" That would mean that Rosalie or Emmett… Or Edward… Suddenly, I recalled the photograph in the newspaper clipping. "You mean - ?"

"Yes, the photograph. Apparently Nicholai was the one who told my mother that Carlisle had the power to save me. Without their involvement, I would have died a normal human death."

"But then we wouldn't be together!" I exclaimed. I couldn't think of anything more terrible. Despite myself, I actually began to feel somewhat grateful to the Romanians.

"That is true," Edward conceded. "And I'm glad Carlisle changed me, though I didn't used to be. I guess I just don't like thinking I owe my happiness to the Romanians."

"It was still Carlisle's decision," I pointed out. "And maybe your mother had more knowledge about Carlisle's abilities than we realized, but this is what she wanted for you. And from what Carlisle's told me, he was considering changing you even before she pleaded with him."

"Yes, he's told me that before as well, but I don't think he would have without her asking the way she did."

"But she would have wanted him to, even if she didn't know to ask," I suggested.

Edward smiled. "Yes, if she could have known I'd end up this happy, she probably would have."

"I think you should consider telling Carlisle," I said. "It seemed to me like he worried that your mother didn't realize what she was asking him to do – that he used her request as an excuse for what he wanted to do anyway, but it sounds like she may have known more than he suspected."

"Possibly," he said. "I hadn't thought of it that way. I'm not sure exactly how much Nicholai exposed of his true nature, but I didn't have the impression that they told my mother that Carlisle was a vampire."

"Maybe not," I said. "But it still sounds like she knew more than we thought."

"I _am_ glad I finally told you," he said. "I'm feeling better about it myself now. And I'm reminded of what your mother was saying when we were at that pizza place in St. Augustine."

"What was that?" I asked.

"She was thinking about how everything in our lives has led us to the point where we are now," he said. "And even though she was thinking specifically about the time we were separated, it really applies to everything. Whatever I've done in the past, and whatever has happened to me in the past, whether it was bad or good, has contributed to bringing me where I am now. And I _love_ where I am right now."

"I love where you are right now, too," I said, climbing into his lap and kissing him once more.

We heard Nessie's car pull up a few minutes later, and I went to the door to greet our daughter.

"Did you make it there on time?" I asked.

"Yeah. She never asked me to slow down once," she said. "Before we left, I showed her how driving at that speed looks to me, so she was fine with it. We actually got there a few minutes early."

Edward was now sitting in the middle of the couch, leaning back with his hands behind his head and his feet propped up on the table. The smile on his face was infectious, and I found myself smiling back at him as I wondered what, in particular, had triggered that amazing smile.

"What?" I asked, sitting down next to him as Renesmee sat down on his other side.

"I'm just happy," he said, wrapping his arms around us. "I truly have everything I could ever want, and for the first time, no one is trying to take it away from me."

Renesmee reached her free hand around to rest it against my face, and what she showed me was not the detailed imagery she usually shared, but just a sense of pure contentment and love.

However, I was certain that I was happier than either of them. I focused my thoughts on the immense joy I felt in being with my perfect family, emptying my mind of words and imagery as my daughter had done, and moved my shield aside.

Edward tilted his head my direction and I could feel his warm breath against my hair. His nose grazed my ear and his smooth lips planted the gentlest of kisses on my cheek.

"Can we just sit here like this for a while?" Nessie asked.

"As long as you want, sweetheart," Edward said. "We have forever."

~~ The End ~~

* * *

**A/N: I have an excessively long author's note to go along with my excessively long chapter. ;)**

***** First, it would totally make my day if you could leave a review and let me know what you thought of the conclusion to the story, or the story as a whole. If you had a favorite chapter, ****favorite scene,** or favorite line, I'd love to know. I hope this last chapter lived up to your expectations for the conclusion, but I'd love to hear your thoughts either way. And if anything from the story seems unresolved or missing, please let me know that as well and maybe I can address it in the epilogue.

**Upcoming posts:**

**EPILOGUE: I still plan to write an epilogue which I *hope* to complete by the end of the year or shortly thereafter. It will be set an additional 10 years in the future (2026). Currently, I only have specific plans in mind for about four characters, and the others are still undecided. So if you have something you envision a particular character doing ten years later, or something you think should be changing for that character within the next ten years, feel free to PM me your ideas, and who knows, it may make it into the epilogue. ****[Update 7/29/2013: I'm still planning to finish the epilogue. I have four pages so far...just need to find time to finish it.]  
**

**OUTTAKE: I am also still planning to post an outtake showing Felix's point of view for the events of chapter 35. This will be posted sometime after the epilogue. I started writing it while trying to get inside Felix's head to understand how and why he was able to switch sides, and I discovered that he saw and heard a few things that Bella wasn't aware of. [Updates 7/29/2013: Still planning to post this too.]  
**

**NEW STORY: I had another outtake started regarding Seth's imprint, but has developed into its own story which will be a spinoff of this one. It will be much shorter than High Noon, and I plan to have the whole story written before I start posting, so there should not be any long delays between chapters for that story. At the moment, it's about 95% written, but I also still have a lot of revision work to do before it will be ready, and it will be posted separately after the epilogue to this story has been posted. [Update 7/29/2013: This is nearly complete, just need major revision on two chapters and minor revision on the others.]  
**

**Story Recommendations:**

**I've also begun serving as beta for Kelsismom's new story, "Mission." It is AU but with many canon elements, and it has some pretty creative ideas I've never seen done in a Twilight fanfic before. I am very excited to be working with her on this, and I encourage you to check it out!**

**One other story I'd like to rec is "Death and the Vampire" by persephonesfolly. It is a mystery written in the POV of a young, canon, vampire Edward attending high school in the 1920s, and I enjoyed it immensely. Persephonesfolly's Carlisle/Sherlock Homes crossover stories are also extremely good, and her others are on my "want to read" list.**

**Acknowledgements:**

**I want to extend a huge thank you to my beta, Javamomma0921. I had no clue how much I needed a beta until she began helping me around chapter 24. She has done so much more than just educating me on comma usage and catching my typos. She actually helped me work out some parts of the plot, and this story definitely would not be what it is without her help. It probably wouldn't ever have been finished, because I can't imagine having accomplished this without her. I've been working on this story for over three years, and she has been with me for about two and a half of those. She continued helping me even after she had, for the most part, moved on from fanfic to focus on her own original writing, and I am extremely grateful for all of her advice, suggestions, and support. Thank you, Jen!**

**I also want to mention that a few descriptions and references in my story were inspired by "Dark Side of the Moon" by Blondie AKA Robin, which is an EPOV New Moon story. It has been around for a while and seems to be pretty well-known, so many of you have probably read it, but if not, I highly recommend it. It was among the first fanfics I read, and it has become almost equal to canon in my mind, especially the scene in the throne room. To the best of my knowledge, I haven't actually "borrowed" any parts from that story, but I loved the way she described how Edward perceives others' talents, particularly how it looked to Edward when he saw Chelsea's bonds through Marcus's eyes - that is essentially what I was envisioning in my mind when I wrote Edward's description to Felix in this chapter (though I didn't attempt to describe the visual appearance, and I added the part about natural bonds looking different from Chelsea's), and it also kind of inspired my descriptions of other talents like Eli's (the colorful memory index) and Jesse's (the talent halo). And in my chapter 35, where Aro says, "All that I offered you before - and more - will be yours," that was a reference back to the offer Aro made Edward in "Dark Side of the Moon." That offer also contributed to my idea of Aro playing museum director, though some of the things SM said about Aro being "freakishly curious" and "keeping the histories" (on the twilightlexicon site) also contributed to that idea.**

**Thanks also to all of my readers and reviewers! Knowing people were still interested and waiting for the next chapter was a huge part of my motivation to finish this project. Some of you have helped shape the story by your comments. Renée's presence in this chapter (36) came about entirely due to a suggestion from a reviewer (Thais da Silva), and the idea to tie Nicholai back to Edward's mother was sparked by someone who suggested putting a newspaper article in the box of pictures/keepsakes that Edward found in his Chicago home. The email from Mike was also due to a reader's request, and I'm sure there are other examples I can't remember at the moment. So to all of you, thank you!  
**


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